In the 52nd episode of DePINed, host Tom Trowbridge welcomes Alessandro De Carli, co-founder of Acurast, to discuss how the mobile devices in our pockets can power the next wave of decentralized computing.

Bank Security and Edge Compute

Alessandro's background in mobile security at Credit Suisse gave him a front-row seat to the evolution of phones into powerful, secure compute environments. While building internal apps for banking, he realized how much R&D companies like Apple pour into making smartphones not only capable but also secure enough for critical applications.

Acurast builds on this insight by leveraging smartphones as the base layer for decentralized computing. The idea: phones are everywhere, underutilized and packed with hardware optimized for modern workloads.

Why Phones?

Smartphones today come with 8-core CPUs and 8GB of RAM, rivaling cloud VMs that cost $300+/month. But unlike a data center, they're accessible and ubiquitous. Acurast turns these devices into confidential compute units through the use of Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), enabling secure, verifiable workloads that don’t require users to trust the device owner.

Security by Design

Every phone running Acurast benchmarks itself and attests its integrity through the TEE. This black-box execution allows any developer to deploy sensitive applications without worrying about data leaks or manipulation. It's like running confidential AWS Lambda functions, but crowd-powered.

From Clusters to Clout

Some Acurast contributors have already built "farms" of hundreds of interconnected phones via USB-C, creating micro data centers. The Acurast protocol abstracts away hardware complexity, matchmaking devices with workloads based on their compute profiles. More powerful devices earn more.

Hardware Arbitrage at Scale

Old phones are undervalued. Acurast gives them new economic utility by turning them into rentable compute. For those sourcing used devices cheaply, this becomes a viable business. Over 50,000 phones already run on Acurast’s testnet.

Use Cases: Confidential AI and Beyond

From self-custody wallets and on-chain automation (e.g. XC-BTC) to confidential AI agents, Acurast opens a new realm of use cases that require both security and decentralization. Enterprises looking to run AI on private data without cloud exposure are already exploring deployments.

Tokenomics: Incentivizing Idle Compute

Acurast rewards device contributors via inflation-based pools, with higher yields for more powerful and staked devices. When customers pay for compute (in fiat or crypto), rewards scale up and part of the fee is burned, aligning protocol incentives and reducing inflation over time.

Decentralization with Direction

Alessandro sees Acurast becoming the largest compute network on earth by activating dormant hardware. The team’s goal? Reach 1M+ devices, rivaling AWS or Google’s capacity, but powered by phones instead of servers.

About DePINed Podcast

DePINed is a podcast exploring the frontier of decentralized physical infrastructure, hosted by Tom Trowbridge, co-founder of Fluence. Each episode features in-depth conversations with founders, builders, and investors who are shaping the future of real-world Web3 networks.

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