Building the Future of Decentralised Trust for DePIN Services on Layer 1 Networks
London, 9th September 2024 – Neuron, the world’s first edge-based DePIN services infrastructure, has launched a $3.5M seed funding round, positioning itself as a vital player in the rapidly growing Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) space. Neuron’s early traction – $150K in revenue, a sold-out beta programme, and six major SaaS integrations – demonstrates the immediate need for this technology in the market.
Neuron’s Role in Decentralizing Services
Neuron is empowering a new era in DePIN where individuals and businesses can run services independently and own their relationships with their customers. In today’s landscape, centralised platforms dominate service delivery. Examples include Flightradar24, Uber, and fiver. Users rely on intermediaries that control their data, access, and customers, often providing unfavourable terms of use, opaque operating practices, and high commissions on each transaction.
Neuron dismantles the traditional model by empowering service providers to operate at the ‘edge’, interacting directly with their customers, bypassing intermediaries and unlocking greater transparency, performance, control, and efficiency for their services. Neuron’s open-source software enables devices at the edge to discover services, connect to them, and pay using Neuron’s machine-to-machine payments infrastructure, which includes innovative customer refund protections. This allows both manual and automated devices and systems to transact seamlessly, and ensures payments are safeguarded and guaranteed by service-level agreements.
Empowering Layer 1 Networks and DePIN Use Cases
Neuron brings essential edge-based infrastructure to Layer 1 networks, attracting projects that aim to fully decentralise their services, driving customer growth in industries such as sensing, AI, the gig economy, and IT infrastructure. Many DePIN projects today are run by centralised intermediaries, which negates a lot of the benefit of web3.
By using Neuron edge-based infrastructure, projects no longer need to rely on a centralised intermediary, ensuring that service providers and customers retain full ownership of their relationships, data, and autonomy. Now their users can engage directly through secure, peer-to-peer transactions, unlocking new opportunities, and high volume transactions, for DePIN projects and Layer 1 ecosystems such as Hedera, Peaq and Solana.
Neuron's ability to accelerate real world utility on layer 1 networks, comes from some of Neuron's core features:
DePIN Explorer - allows customers to find DePIN services across any layer 1 network.
P2P Connectivity - allows customers to stream high bandwidth real time data with minimal latency and the highest levels of availability.
Customer Guarantees - ensures that customers can obtain refunds in the case that a service provider fails to deliver a service.
Service Level Agreements - ensures that customers have clarity on what they are buying, and when a service is not meeting that quality threshold.
Cross-Chain Deployments - allows developers to deploy services cross-chain, reducing risks and increasing service availability for customers.
Neuron's DePIN Explorer (explorer.neuron.world)
With all of these features readily available, SaaS platforms can integrate services quickly and easily, without having to hire specialist web3 software developers,
Unlocking New Earning Opportunities for Freelancers and Gig Workers
As the freelance and gig economy continues to surge, with a projected 50% of the U.S. workforce expected to engage in freelance work by 2027, more people are turning to side gigs and flexible income opportunities. However, many freelancers and gig workers face challenges from centralised platforms that charge high fees, restrict access to their data, and enforce unfavourable terms. Neuron addresses this by empowering freelancers to directly connect with clients through decentralised networks, bypassing intermediaries. With Neuron’s platform, freelancers can fully own their profiles and manage transactions without being subjected to platform commissions, giving them greater control over their earnings and relationships with clients. This shift enables gig workers to earn more income while reducing dependence on third-party platforms, aligning with the growing demand for independent work and economic empowerment.
Four Key Verticals for a Decentralised Future
Neuron’s edge-based infrastructure can enable a range of use cases, but the company has its sights set on four key verticals:
Sensing: Sensors can sell data directly to third-party SaaS companies, providing a range of benefits including up to 50x faster data transmission and ‘always-on’ network availability.
IT Infrastructure: Decentralised VPNs, data storage, and video streaming can be sold directly to end-users, enhancing privacy and performance, and reducing risks.
Freelancing: Freelancers can register and own their online profiles and data, enabling direct transactions with clients and eliminating platform fees and censorship risks.
AI Agents: Specialised autonomous AI agents can be deployed for business tasks, offering a catalogue of resources to automate business processes efficiently.
Neuron’s Secret Sauce: Decentralised Trust Through Validator Networks
Neuron’s secret sauce is its decentralised validator network, which guarantees trust and transparency between buyers and sellers in a way that centralised platforms cannot. Unlike traditional models, such as PayPal’s buyer protection, where a single entity controls dispute resolution, Neuron uses a decentralised approach with a validator network. Disputes are resolved through a majority-vote system, consisting of validator nodes that must stake tokens to be able to vote. This not only ensures fairness and accountability but also removes the need for centralised oversight, making Neuron's ecosystem uniquely secure, scalable, and resilient to bias or control by any one party. This validator network is key to unlocking peer-to-peer service transactions and empowering decentralised service ecosystems to thrive.
Progress and Roadmap
Neuron has made significant strides with the platform, achieving the following key milestones:
Launched Neuron MVP on Hedera testnet (see explorer)
Use-Case 1: Aviation beta program sold out within 2 hours
Use-Case 2: GNSS - Initial PoC and integrations in progress
Generated $150k+ of revenue, 50+ live services and 6 SaaS integrations
Out-of-the-box integration with worlds leading flight tracking sensor
Won contract with UK council to deploy sensors across city
Project BLUEPRINT customer demo with 100+ people (see below)
Next Steps
By the end of 2024, Neuron plans to deploy on the Hedera mainnet, marking a significant milestone in the project's journey. In Q2 2025, Neuron will launch its $NRN token, creating a foundation of trust between stakeholders and unlocking new use cases across verticals such as AI, sensing, the gig economy, and IT infrastructure. By the end of 2025, Neuron aims to scale to 3-4 key use cases, with 10,000 active users and an expected $500K+ ARR.
James Dunthorne, CEO and Co-founder of Neuron, stated: “Neuron is pioneering edge-based infrastructure that empowers service providers to seamlessly transact with their customers in a trustless environment. Neuron bridges the gap between web3 technology and real-world utility, providing significant value and volume to Layer 1 networks, and DePIN use cases. Neuron provides the tools to innovate, scale, and unlock new opportunities, and we’re incredibly excited about the growth potential in the next 18 months, and the impact Neuron will have across retail and enterprise applications.”
For more information, visit www.neuron.world or get in touch with one of our team.
Fundraising Contact - James Dunthorne, CEO
Email: funding@neuron.world