In Brief

DePINed Podcast is your front-row seat to the builders, thinkers, and founders reshaping our physical world through decentralized infrastructure. Each episode explores how crypto incentives and community-powered networks are transforming industries — from connectivity and storage to robotics and mobility.

In this episode of the DePINed Podcast, your host Tom Trowbridge sits down with Ayush Ranjan, co-founder and CEO of Huddle01 — a decentralized communication network that’s taking on Zoom, but without the hyperscalers.

Ayush joined Tom right after DePIN Day Denver to talk about the future of low-latency connectivity, why bandwidth should be people-powered, and how Huddle01 quietly became one of the most promising DePIN projects in the space.

Why Zoom wasn’t built for the world

Let’s go back to 2020. Everyone is on Zoom. But not everyone can be on Zoom — especially in countries like India where calls are routed through servers in North Virginia, causing massive lag. People had to combine Zoom + WhatsApp just to make basic communication work.

That’s when Ayush and his co-founder Sush saw the real problem: it wasn’t about the app — it was about infrastructure.

“We realized the problem wasn’t Zoom. It was how real-time communication was routed.”

They built Huddle01 at ETHGlobal’s HackFS with the simple goal to decentralize bandwidth. Not storage. Not compute. Bandwidth.

And that little detail makes all the difference.

So, what is Huddle01?

It started as a real-time decentralized communication network. Think: Zoom, but powered by nodes. No centralized servers. No hyperscalers.

Over time, it became more than just a better video call tool — it evolved into a full DePIN project, letting people contribute bandwidth from the edge: laptops, Raspberry Pis, home computers.

Today, Huddle01 is…

• A video meeting app (like Zoom, but 1080p and runs better in browser)

• A decentralized audio space platform (like Twitter Spaces, but open infra)

• A B2B SDK for devs building social + communication tools

• A growing network of 2,500+ global nodes (with testnet rewards)

And they’ve already hit 8 million minutes of meetings across their network.

What makes it different?

“Your laptop becomes the node. And the latency drops from 300ms to 50ms.”

The tech is peer-to-peer from the start — not a centralized system slowly decentralizing. That means your call could be powered by your neighbor’s laptop instead of a server across the world.

And it’s fast. Like really fast.

They’ve also built it with real-world usability in mind:

• Integrated into Google Calendar and Cal.com

• Can livestream to 10+ platforms at once

• Offers Zoom + Streamyard functionality for $49/month

• Offers SDKs cheaper than Agora (Web2’s go-to CPaaS tool)

Oh, and they’re planning to burn 100% of all revenue to support the token. Not 80%. Not 50%. A full buy-and-burn. That’s one of the most aggressive value-accrual models in DePIN.

Wait — are they replacing Zoom?

Not exactly. They’re playing a bigger game.

“Our goal isn’t to fight Zoom — it’s to get Zoom to run on our decentralized bandwidth network.”

Zoom pays insane fees to AWS and other hyperscalers. Huddle01 can offer lower latency and lower cost. That’s why they’ve modeled out what it would take to support Zoom’s traffic on Huddle01.

The number? 46,900 nodes.

Right now they have 2,500.

But here’s the smart part: they’re not flooding the market with nodes. They only sell more when demand is there — keeping token emissions aligned with real usage. That’s a major shift from old DePIN models that were supply-first and utility-maybe.

Where is this going?

With 40% MoM growth and 8M+ minutes logged, Huddle01 is quietly building one of the most efficient, usable DePIN networks in the space.

They’re already being used by:

• DAOs like Arbitrum

• Social apps on Lens and Farcaster

• EdTech startups across India

• Web3-native and Web2 orgs needing token-gated, multi-stream calls

And they haven’t even launched their mainnet token yet.

Why this matters for DePIN

This is what DePIN is about — not just decentralized infrastructure for the sake of it, but better infrastructure. Faster, cheaper, and owned by people.

Huddle01 is the kind of project that proves DePIN doesn’t need to be hard to use. In fact, it might even be… better?

“Every Huddle01 customer is already part of the DePIN pledge — they just don’t know it yet.”

Stay Connected with the DePIN Ecosystem

DePINed Podcast is a front-row seat to the builders, thinkers, and founders reshaping our physical world through decentralized infrastructure. Hosted by Tom Trowbridge, every episode explores the real-world use cases, economic models, and visionaries behind the DePIN movement.

Want to go deeper?

Join us at DePIN Day — a global event series designed to spotlight the latest trends, challenges, and breakthroughs in the decentralized infrastructure space. From bandwidth to compute, from storage to mobility, DePIN Day brings together founders, researchers, developers, and ecosystem leaders to shape the future — together.

🛰️ Let’s build the future of infrastructure:
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