A DePIN project doing PR in 2026 has one problem before it has a pitch problem: the acronym. Editors at CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Decrypt and The Block did not grow up with a DePIN beat. The first job of DePIN PR is not to announce a milestone, it is to build the frame those editors need to care about the milestone. Do that first, then every announcement has a home.

I run fractional PR for Web3 and AI founders, and decentralized physical infrastructure is the vertical where I have seen the most wasted spend on standard crypto PR playbooks applied to a category that does not yet exist in the press. The Fluence Network campaign is the clearest worked example I have. Tom Trowbridge, Fluence's co-founder, became the person who made DePIN a tier-1 beat, not by pitching DePIN as a story, but by pitching the underlying infrastructure shift and letting editors arrive at the category themselves. The lesson generalises. This is the full strategy.

The acronym problem is a narrative problem

DePIN stands for Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks. It describes a genuinely new model: token-incentivised, community-owned networks of physical hardware, whether that is wireless coverage, GPU compute, energy grids, mobility sensors or storage. The problem is that "DePIN" as a label carries zero editorial weight outside of crypto-native media. Pitch it cold to a Forbes contributor, a TechCrunch editor or a mainstream infrastructure reporter and you are spending the first half of the email teaching vocabulary. By the time they understand what it is, the pitch is dead.

This is not a marketing problem. It is a category-creation problem, and it requires a different playbook than standard crypto PR. Standard crypto PR pitches the announcement, assumes the beat exists, and chases wires. Category-creation PR builds the intellectual frame first, seeds it with named experts, and only then brings in announcements that land inside a frame editors already understand. The difference in outcomes is large.

Field ruleYou cannot pitch a story to a beat that does not exist yet. The first job of DePIN PR is to create the beat, not fill it.

How Fluence Network built the DePIN beat

When I worked with Fluence Network, the task was not to announce product milestones into a void. It was to make decentralised cloud compute legible to the reporters who cover infrastructure, cloud, AI and Web3, and to establish Tom Trowbridge as the person those reporters called when they needed a DePIN angle. That meant three parallel moves.

Move one: the founder byline as category primer

We placed a Tom Trowbridge opinion piece on CoinDesk Opinion that did not start with "DePIN is a new category." It started with a concrete argument about why centralised cloud compute was structurally fragile, and what a distributed alternative would make possible. The byline gave Tom a named position on the record. The argument gave editors a frame they could borrow. Within weeks, when reporters filed pieces on compute scarcity or AI infrastructure costs, Tom was a natural source, and the Fluence framing was the one they reached for. That is how a beat gets built: one sharp, argued, named piece of writing at a time.

Move two: pitching the trend, not the company

The pitches that landed in the early months were not product pitches. They were trend pitches: "here is a structural shift in how compute gets provisioned, here are the numbers, here is an expert who can walk you through it." The company was the proof point inside the trend, not the subject of the pitch. Editors at The Block, Blockworks and Decrypt covered the trend and named Fluence inside it. That is a far stronger placement than a company-pitched story, and it is the approach that eventually made DePIN a named beat rather than a niche term insiders used.

Move three: seeding secondary voices

Category-creation PR does not work if only the founder is talking. We built a short list of ecosystem partners, researchers and adjacent builders who were willing to articulate the same infrastructure shift from their own vantage point. When multiple credible voices make the same structural argument independently, editors see a movement rather than a marketing push. This is the difference between a company campaign and a category narrative.

The Fluence templateFounder byline on CoinDesk Opinion establishing the structural argument. Trend pitches to The Block, Blockworks and Decrypt citing third-party data. Secondary voices from ecosystem partners reinforcing the frame. Announcements timed to land after the frame is set, not before. The sequence matters as much as the content.

The two-track media strategy for DePIN

DePIN projects have two distinct audiences that live in entirely different media environments, and trying to serve both with one content track is a common and expensive mistake. Track one is the crypto-native press: CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Decrypt, The Block, Blockworks, CryptoTimes JP, BloomingBit, TokenPost. These outlets already have some coverage of DePIN-adjacent projects and their readers are fluent in token mechanics, infrastructure protocols and governance. Track two is the mainstream infrastructure, cloud, AI and enterprise tech press: Forbes, TechCrunch, Wired, IEEE Spectrum, Protocol (now a newsletter), and vertical tech press for the specific hardware category the project touches.

The audiences want different things from the same story. Crypto-native editors want token mechanics, on-chain data, protocol differentiation, ecosystem traction and raise details. Mainstream tech editors want the infrastructure problem being solved, the market size, the named customers or enterprise pilots, and the "why now" tied to a macro shift they already cover, such as AI compute demand or grid decentralisation. A single press release satisfies neither particularly well. A two-track pitch strategy, with different angles, different proof points and different supporting data for each track, outperforms a single blast by a wide margin.

Track Target outlets What the pitch leads with Proof points that land
Crypto-native CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, Blockworks, Decrypt Protocol differentiation, token model, on-chain traction Network growth stats, raise details, named ecosystem partners
Mainstream tech Forbes, TechCrunch, Wired, vertical infrastructure press Infrastructure problem solved, AI/cloud market angle Enterprise pilots, compute cost comparison, macro trend data
Regional CryptoTimes JP, TokenPost KR, BloomingBit, Inc42 IN Local node operator opportunity, regional traction Node counts by region, local ecosystem builders, local raises

When to use a launch announcement versus a category piece

The trap most DePIN projects fall into is reaching for a press release on every milestone, the way a more established category would. The problem is that without the underlying frame, a press release about a mainnet launch, a partnership or a token listing lands in silence. Editors have no existing context to slot it into, and a bare announcement does not give them enough to build a story from.

The rule I use: do not run a standalone launch announcement until you have at least two published pieces, a bylined essay and a trend feature, that have already put the category frame on the record. Once those exist, an announcement has a home. Reporters who covered the trend piece will recognise the project. Editors who received the byline know the founder's name. The announcement lands inside a story, not outside one. This is the sequencing principle I cover in more depth in the tier-1 PR trap playbook, which looks at why chasing top-line placements before building narrative context tends to produce a lot of activity and very little compound value.

Sequencing ruleMonth one and two: founder byline establishing the category argument, trend pitches seeding the beat. Month three: first product announcement, placed with reporters who already have context. Month four onwards: cadence of announcements and deeper features, building on the frame that now exists. Rushing to announcements before the frame exists is the most common DePIN PR error.

The founder's media role in DePIN

In an established category, the company does the PR and the founder does occasional interviews. In category-creation, the founder is the primary PR asset. Editors do not yet have DePIN on their beat list, but they do have "people I trust to explain where infrastructure is going." The founder has to earn a place on that list before the announcements start landing, and the only way to do that is bylined writing, on-the-record interviews and a consistent public point of view that editors can test over time.

This is where founder profiling becomes a functional requirement, not a nice-to-have. A founder profiling program builds the founder's digital footprint, their bylines, their quoted presence in trend pieces, their social commentary on infrastructure shifts, into a body of evidence that search engines and journalists both use to decide whether this person is a credible source on the category. Without that footprint, every pitch starts cold, every interview has to begin with "let me explain what DePIN is," and the credibility ceiling stays low. With it, the founder is the authority the reporter calls, not the founder asking to be covered.

For DePIN specifically, the founder's public voice needs to do two things at once: translate the technical infrastructure story for a non-technical editor, and articulate the economic incentive model clearly enough that a mainstream business journalist can write about it without a crypto glossary. These are different skills from product building, and they are worth investing in deliberately.

What the numbers actually look like

Category-creation PR takes longer than campaign PR. A standard launch sprint, $15K to $40K for a defined announcement window, will not do category-creation work. Building a beat takes six to nine months of consistent effort, and the results compound rather than spike and decay. The Fluence work produced earned coverage in CoinDesk, The Block, Blockworks, Decrypt and mainstream infrastructure press over a sustained window, and Tom Trowbridge became a named source that reporters returned to without prompting. That is the compound outcome that a sprint cannot deliver.

Budget-wise, fractional PR for a DePIN project in active category-creation mode runs $5,000 to $12,000 per month for a senior operator. A full agency at $15,000 to $45,000 per month will have more staffing but may not have the DePIN-specific narrative instinct, which matters more than headcount in a category where the wrong frame actively sets you back. The Web3 PR campaigns program is built for exactly this: sustained narrative work over a real runway, not a burst of activity around a single event.

Field rulePR is narrative architecture, not announcements. In DePIN, that means the architecture comes first. Build the frame, then fill it with news. Every announcement becomes news when the narrative is strong enough.

The data and proof-point toolkit for DePIN pitches

The single most common reason a DePIN pitch fails is the absence of third-party data. "Our network has grown 40 percent month on month" is a company claim. "Here is on-chain data showing node count growth across three networks over six months, with Fluence or your project highlighted" is a story. Editors in both the crypto-native and mainstream press are trained to distrust company claims and trust verifiable third-party data. DePIN projects have an advantage here that many do not use: the data is on-chain and public.

Build a data toolkit before you pitch. On-chain node growth, uptime statistics, compute jobs served, geographic distribution of node operators, token distribution metrics, comparison of compute cost versus centralised alternatives: all of this is citable, verifiable and the kind of material that makes a pitch concrete rather than promotional. Pair that data with a clear "why now" tied to a macro trend the editor already covers, such as AI compute demand, energy grid resilience or satellite connectivity, and you have the raw material of a story. Name the trend, provide the data, make the expert available. That is the pitch formula that works.

Regional plays deserve their own strategy

DePIN projects with node operator communities in specific regions have a regional media angle that most campaigns ignore. CryptoTimes JP, BloomingBit (Korea), TokenPost, and Inc42 (India) all have active readerships that care about local node operator economies, local token incentive structures, and local infrastructure buildouts. A regional angle pitched to a regional outlet, in the local economic context, lands far more reliably than a translated version of the global press release. If your node operator distribution skews toward Southeast Asia, East Asia or South Asia, build a dedicated regional press layer and treat it as its own campaign track, not an afterthought.

What not to do

Three patterns that reliably waste DePIN PR budgets.

  • Launching with a press release before any frame exists. A mainnet announcement with no prior coverage, no founder byline, no trend feature, lands in silence. The reporters receiving it have no context and the announcement does not provide enough to build one.
  • Pitching "DePIN" as the story hook. Editors at non-crypto-native outlets do not have DePIN on their coverage radar. Leading with the acronym requires teaching vocabulary before making a case, and most pitches die in the vocabulary lesson. Lead with the infrastructure problem, the market context, the macro trend. Let DePIN be the solution rather than the premise.
  • Skipping the founder voice entirely. Category-creation without a named, credible expert is fragile. The moment a competitor founder makes a stronger public case for the same category, you have lost the narrative authority you never built. The founder's voice is not optional infrastructure in DePIN. It is the load-bearing structure.
SJ
Shilika Jain

Fractional PR and narrative strategy for Web3, DePIN, AI and cybersecurity founders. 50+ protocols placed across Forbes, CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, Decrypt, The Block, Blockworks and AI Magazine. Category-creation campaigns for infrastructure-layer projects including Fluence Network. View full profile → · Book a 30-min teardown →

Frequently asked questions

What is the biggest mistake DePIN projects make with PR?
Pitching announcements before building a category frame. Editors at CoinDesk, The Block and mainstream tech press do not have a DePIN beat in the way they have a "funding" beat or an "AI" beat. A mainnet announcement or a raise press release sent without prior context lands in silence because there is no frame for it to slot into. The first job of DePIN PR is to build the beat, not fill it. That means founder bylines, trend pitches and secondary voices before any standalone product announcement.
How long does DePIN category-creation PR take?
Six to nine months of consistent effort is the realistic runway for genuine category-creation work. The first two to three months are spent building the intellectual frame: founder bylines, trend pitches, secondary voices from ecosystem partners. Months three and four bring the first announcements, which now land inside context rather than into a void. From month five onwards the narrative compounds: reporters return to the founder, the category is cited in features by other journalists, and new announcements have a media home without needing a cold pitch. A sprint campaign cannot replicate this. See the Web3 PR campaigns page for how the program is structured over a sustained runway.
How should a DePIN project pitch mainstream tech press vs crypto-native press?
Different angles for different audiences. Crypto-native press (CoinDesk, Cointelegraph, The Block, Blockworks, Decrypt) wants token mechanics, on-chain traction data, protocol differentiation, and raise details. Mainstream tech press (Forbes, TechCrunch, Wired, vertical infrastructure press) wants the infrastructure problem being solved, the market size, enterprise pilots, and a "why now" tied to a macro trend they already cover, such as AI compute demand or grid decentralisation. A single press release serves neither well. Build two distinct pitch tracks with different leading angles and supporting proof points.
Why is the founder's voice so important in DePIN PR specifically?
Because you are creating a category, not joining one. In an established category, a company announcement can ride an existing beat. In DePIN, editors do not yet have the category on their radar, and the only thing that changes that is a named, credible expert making a consistent public argument over time. The founder has to earn a place on the "people I trust on infrastructure" shortlist before any announcement will land reliably. Founder profiling is the program that builds that footprint deliberately, through bylines, quoted presence and public commentary.
What data should a DePIN project include in a media pitch?
On-chain, verifiable data beats company claims every time. Node count growth over time, geographic distribution of node operators, uptime statistics, compute jobs served, token distribution metrics, and cost-versus-centralised-alternative comparisons are all citable and independently verifiable. Pair that data with a macro trend the editor already covers, such as AI compute demand, satellite connectivity, or energy grid resilience, and you have the raw material of a story rather than a promotional pitch. Third-party data is what moves a pitch from "interesting company announcement" to "story I want to write."

Building narrative for a DePIN or Web3 infrastructure project? The Web3 PR campaigns program covers sustained category-creation work. Founder profiling builds the expert footprint that makes every pitch land harder. Before you book a placement sprint, read the tier-1 PR trap and the full playbook library.