DePIN Project Wants to Send Satellites to Space to Give Internet to the Underserved

Spacecoin, a decentralized physical infrastructure network leveraging nanosatellites to provide high-speed internet to remote communities, has an ambitious lofty goal.

Unveiled exclusively to Decrypt during Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul on Wednesday, the initiative aims to bridge the digital divide affecting billions of people, particularly in underserved areas, by leveraging infrastructure from Layer-1 blockchain Creditcoin.

“Because of the cost, the network infrastructure today is centralized,” Tae Oh, founder of Creditcoin, told Decrypt. “Each telco owns its network infrastructure and is not sharing it for obvious reasons.”

The founder pointed to places like China and, more recently, Brazil—whose Supreme Court recently denied access for 215 million people to social media platform X.

“A government that controls the telcos can censor what website or information a user has access to,” Tae Oh said. “We want to replace this with a constellation of satellites, which allows anyone to be a part of the network infrastructure.”

With the launch of multiple low-earth orbit satellites—no larger than the size of a microwave oven—the company is hoping to establish a global 5G network for a fraction of the cost compared to traditional methods including fiber optic cables, explained Scott Hasbrouck, Spacecoin’s chief technology officer.

“They're so cheap, they're disposable,” Hasbrouk said regarding the drop in satellite production costs in recent years and the design of their nano models. “They’re designed to last three to five years before they completely demise on reentry interface.”

The project is also being developed with input from a U.S. military general, a lunar scientist, a NASA astronaut, and several blockchain industry experts.

On the blockchain side, Spacecoin plans to utilize the technology to manage data transmission securely, with users paying network fees in crypto. By building on Creditcoin, Spacecoin wants to enable users to pay internet fees with crypto across any chain.

Spacecoin executives claim its use of smart contracts for on-chain data transmission "opens up" a new level of security and transparency, which they also said marked a first for DePIN satellite infrastructure.

The launch of the first satellite, CTC-0, is scheduled for Q4 2024.