Wireless infrastructure can be expensive to build, and the business case is difficult to make in indoor and digital divide environments. Sharing the infrastructure is a powerful and efficient way to reduce costs and encourage deployments, but so far, it has been difficult to do because the business models and incentives were not there.

I talked with Sarah Aberg, Chief Legal Officer at Helium, about how decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs) use blockchain technology to enable a new way to share telecom infrastructure, where both infrastructure owners and service providers can make a large number of transactions in real time in a fast, low-cost, simple and transparent way. This platform provides incentives for enterprises, network operators, public and community entities and venue managers to deploy the infrastructure, and for service providers to use that infrastructure when they need it.

Helium has been successfully using this model for some time with Wi-Fi networks. However, to scale it, Helium and others need a regulatory framework to protect all the players involved. Sarah tells us about how she is working on this with the SEC in the US to incorporate DePIN into the new crypto regulation.

You can find more on this at:

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure, Written Submission to SEC Crypto Task Force (June 17, 2025)

Helium Draft Legislative Amendment Proposal, Written Submission to SEC Crypto Task Force (July 21, 2025)

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