Filecoin and Helium Take the Lead in Providing Web3 Infrastructure

Web3 has grown to become one of the crypto industries largest goals, and the number of projects aiming to contribute to its creation and growth is growing on a daily basis. However, according to the recent data published by Messari — its Web3 Index shows that Filecoin and Helium are the two largest blockchains in the sector.

The index shows that Filecoin generated around $9.4 million, while helium managed to hit $14.5 million, making their combined total exceed $23 million dollars in revenue. Messari also published its Web3 Infrastructure Q1 '22 Revenue Report, noting that a number of projects has been working on Web 3.0 infrastructure for years now. However, they are only now starting to experience increased network usage, which, in turn, led to the projects’ finally starting to generate revenue.

This includes protocols other than Filecoin and Helium, of course, but according to Messari, the combined revenue of all these other protocols in Q1 2022 is equal to only around 4% of what Filecoin and Helium are generating. Messari revealed this and other information regarding the state of the market and these two projects in a series of tweets.

2/ @Filecoin & @helium generated substantial protocol revenue in Q1’22 – $9.4 million and $14.5 million respectively.

The remainder of the selected Web3 infrastructure protocols cumulatively generated over $1 million in protocol revenue. pic.twitter.com/ot5TuY1f8f

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) April 14, 2022

3/ @ArweaveTeam produced $740,000 in revenue, a 47% increase compared to the previous quarter.

The Arweave network has seen data storage grow 977% YoY in large part because of Bundlr which accounts for over 70% of the total Arweave transactions. pic.twitter.com/5F0o2EsWWQ

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) April 14, 2022

About Filecoin and Helium

Filecoin and Helium are both advanced and interesting projects that are seeing growing demand. Filecoin, for example, is a project that offers decentralized storage by borrowing extra space from users who have it and are willing to offer it in exchange for rewards. As such, it functions as a decentralized cloud that can be used by providers and users from all over the world to store information in a decentralized way.

Filecoin was built on top of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), and it comes with a variety of use cases, including support for things like NFTs, gaming, Web3, metaverse, audio and video storage and retrieval, and more. The project has seen great success and interest in 2022, and in the first four months, it already saw a 7x surge in the number of projects that it hosts.

Back at the start of 2021, the project has been hosting only 40 projects. As of April 2022, it hosts over 330 of them, becoming one of the fastest-growing projects of this kind throughout the crypto world.

On the other hand, there is Helium, which is a cryptocurrency and blockchain-powered network that aims to offer decentralized internet to users around the world. The project uses long-range wireless hotspots to provide internet signal to places where celular providers do not, which already gives it an advantage over traditional internet providers. The project has been active for about two years now, and since it went live, it has amassed over 500,000 miners who operate hotspots all over the world.

It is expected that it will hit 1 million hotspots in the next six months, as the growth rate of its network of miners has been increasing.

Another thing worth noting is that both projects have seen their native cryptocurrencies performing differently from others in the crypto market. Both tokens are believed to be significantly undervalued, which might be worth looking into if you seek to find new investment opportunities.

Aside from the two projects, the most successful ones include the likes of Arweave, Sia, Akash, Livepeer, and The Graph, although at significantly lower levels.

To learn more visit our Investing in Helium guide.