DAWN, a decentralized protocol designed to offer user-owned and operated multi-gigabit broadband providers, introduced that it has raised $13 million in a Collection B funding spherical led by Polychain Capital.
In accordance with an announcement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday, the funding will likely be used to increase the Solana-based protocol’s community attain throughout america and develop worldwide deployments.
The New York-based mission permits people and organizations to deploy wi-fi nodes that act as community hosts and supply Web entry. Hosts earn compensation based mostly on protection high quality and demand. This mannequin goals to keep away from the centralized possession buildings that dominate conventional broadband and as an alternative distribute infrastructure possession to the community edge.
The funding highlights investor curiosity in bringing decentralization to real-world providers, an method referred to as Decentralized Bodily Infrastructure (DePIN).
DAWN isn’t alone in figuring out its communications as a DePIN software. One other notable mission, Helium, permits customers to arrange scorching spots to perform as small cellular websites. The platform can be constructed on Solana and expanded into the Brazilian market this month in partnership with native WiFi supplier Mambo.
DAWN serves greater than 4 million households in america, however its first worldwide growth in Accra, Ghana, targets underserved neighborhoods the place fiber adoption has confirmed sluggish and costly to deploy.
The mission additionally launched client {hardware}, together with Black Field gadgets that additionally perform as routers and distributed infrastructure nodes. The system helps a number of blockchain ecosystems, permitting households to instantly take part in broadband supply whereas incomes rewards.
