It's kind of absurd that we can't order, from our couch, visual confirmation that a thing is or is not the case. Phone-based verification networks are compelling but offer very limited (ground) visibility. Satellites work, but lead time is long, resolution is low, video is not really possible, and it is super expensive. I'd like to be able order a drone, on demand, providing an aerial summary of what is going on, anywhere in the world. I think this sort of real world validation engine becomes increasingly valuable as people and institutions wield AI tools to foment and reinforce false narratives with visual "evidence". Also, what if I have fixed real estate assets (ranches, buildings, houses) all over the place and want to monitor them remotely from a sort of mission control. CCTV sort of works but it's limited. Drones + drone docks are effectively a 24/7 security guard and booth that you can tap into remotely from anywhere in the world. Throw a dock on your property, get a live stream and aerial surveillance for up to a 5-mile range around your site. Night-vision, megaphone, flood lights, the whole nine yards. Raad is deploying docks today for large solar and utilities customers but the applicability will be much grander, esp. as the costs come down and capabilities broaden.

everyone talking about "smooth" coffee and liquor these things should bite, body needs a reminder of their seriousness

Until today, the American drone industry has been strangled by regulation. The future of infrastructure inspection, emergency response, surveillance, and delivery has always been autonomous. But that future just got pulled forward five years...

Feds just green-lit fully beyond visual line of sight drone ops. This is akin to the regulatory clarity we just got in crypto but for the near-earth economy. Think: drones canvassing every critical infrastructure asset, assisting pd/fire, surveillance, deliveries

maturing is realizing that a six-speed f355 berlinetta will do more for your mental health than a meditation practice

The moat in infrastructure intelligence is data gravity: more, fresher, higher-signal rgb, thermal, lidar data. Then you fine-tune and retrain the frontier open source general models to outperform everyone else. TLDR: millions of drone flights

The Real World Truth Engine

An irreverent cohort of new DePIN entrepreneurs are ruffling feathers with a bold strategy: build revenue-generating businesses before launching tokens. While many will take to the streets to protest this vile repudiation of the status quo, just stick with me. Whereas DePIN 1.0 was defined primarily by token emissions, DePIN 2.0 will be defined by a return to real business fundamentals: product-market fit, unit economics, CAC, revenue, cash flows. That “DePIN tokens are down” is actually not a valid incrimination of anything. Alts are down and DePIN has lost the sexy bid. But this was always destined to happen. DePIN is actually the least sexy, and in the long run will be the most fundamentally priced sector. The most successful DePIN projects will feel unsexy because they’ll operate like infrastructure. They’ll deliver fundamental resources with the reliability of a utility. But, in time, some DePIN tokens will rise from the ashes. And those tokens belong to the platforms that are good businesses today and will become great businesses due to their surgical deployment of a token and even more surgical accrual of value to that token. I think DePIN 2.0 - The Business Generation - broadly looks like this: 1. Teams first figure out what works, and what doesn’t work before releasing the beast 2. They always generate substantial revenue before releasing the token 3. Rather than “order hardware and deploy anywhere”, incentivized build-out is a) phased b) tightly mapped against revenue scaling units (typically by geography) 4. The token’s purpose is simple and easy to understand for deployers, investors, and speculators 5. Token sinks are more abundant than token faucets 6. The primary token sink is revenue accrual 7. Emissions schedules are adaptive, not fixed from t=0 8. Apps are built without tokens, infrastructure to support the app is built with tokens Decentralization enables key properties that truly global systems require: censorship resistance, capital formation, and the ability to permisionlessly build applications on top. We’ve spent too much time navel gazing about complex token incentives models and pursuing “decentralization” as if it’s some holy principle. Nobody cares about decentralization in and of itself. What we need to care about is building generational companies, that grow every year, and generate a lot of cash.

An irreverent cohort of new DePIN entrepreneurs are ruffling feathers with a bold strategy: build revenue-generating businesses before launching tokens. While many will take to the streets to protest this vile repudiation of the status quo, just stick with me. Whereas DePIN 1.0 was defined primarily by token emissions, DePIN 2.0 will be defined by business logic: a return to real business fundamentals: product-market fit, unit economics, CAC, revenue, cash flows. That “DePIN tokens are down” is actually not a valid incrimination of anything. Alts are down and DePIN has lost the sexy bid. But this was always destined to happen. DePIN is actually the least sexy, and in the long run will be the most fundamentally priced sector. The most successful DePIN projects will feel unsexy because they’ll operate like infrastructure. They’ll deliver fundamental resources with the reliability of a utility. But, in time, some DePIN tokens will rise from the ashes. And those tokens belong to the platforms that are good businesses today and will become great businesses due to their surgical deployment of a token and even more surgical accrual of value to that token. I think DePIN 2.0 - The Business Generation - broadly looks like this: 1. Teams first figure out what works, and what doesn’t work before releasing the beast 2. They always generate substantial revenue before releasing the token 3. Rather than “order hardware and deploy anywhere”, incentivized build-out is a) phased b) tightly mapped against revenue scaling units (typically by geography) 4. The token’s purpose is simple and easy to understand for deployers, investors, and speculators 5. Token sinks are more abundant than token faucets 6. The primary token sink is revenue accrual 7. Emissions schedules are adaptive, not fixed from t=0 8. Apps are built without tokens, infrastructure to support the app is built with tokens Decentralization enables key properties that truly global systems require: censorship resistance, capital formation, and the ability to permisionlessly build applications on top. We’ve spent too much time navel gazing about complex token incentives models and pursuing “decentralization” as if it’s some holy principle. Nobody cares about decentralization in and of itself. What we need to care about is building generational companies, that grow every year, and generate a lot of cash.

there are two kinds of fast talkers one knows exactly what he is talking about one is shielding his confusion by making you feel like you’re the slow one And each is an expert at recognizing the other