io.net

io.net is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) built on Solana that aggregates idle GPU computing power from around the world into on-demand clusters for artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. Founded in 2022, the project emerged from a quantitative trading firm whose founders confronted prohibitive GPU costs — a single NVIDIA A100 card ran over $80 per day on commercial cloud providers — and concluded that pooling underutilized hardware across independent data centers, crypto miners, and partner networks could deliver equivalent compute at significantly lower cost.

How the Network Works

io.net uses Ray, an open-source distributed computing framework, to orchestrate geo-distributed GPU clusters. Machine learning engineers can provision a cluster in under two minutes, compared to weeks on traditional cloud providers. The network targets workloads that benefit from parallelism: model training, hyperparameter tuning, and batch inference. io.net positions its pricing at 50 to 70 percent below comparable AWS or Google Cloud instances.

GPU suppliers connect hardware through the IO Worker application and earn IO tokens paid out hourly. The network operates across 138 countries. io.net claims over 100,000 GPUs connected to the network, though independent analysis in mid-2026 found approximately 6,720 verified active devices at any given time. The project attributes the gap to the distinction between registered and currently-scheduled hardware.

IO Token and Tokenomics

IO is the native token of the io.net network, launched at a Token Generation Event (TGE) in June 2024 that briefly valued the project at roughly $2 billion fully diluted. The total supply is capped at 800 million IO. At TGE, 500 million IO (62.5% of supply) entered circulation; the remaining 300 million is earmarked for supplier and staker rewards, emitted on an approximately 20-year schedule.

IO reached an all-time high of $6.43 in June 2024. As of mid-2026 the token trades near $0.16, roughly 96% below that peak, reflecting broader market pressure and persistent unlock-driven sell pressure from early investors who hold positions at a $1 billion fully diluted valuation.

Incentive Dynamic Engine

On June 11, 2026, io.net launched the Incentive Dynamic Engine (IDE), a demand-driven tokenomics overhaul that replaces fixed emissions with a mechanism tying IO issuance directly to actual network revenue. Under the IDE, the protocol calculates how many IO tokens are needed to cover supplier payouts at the live market price and emits only that amount. Once supplier rewards are covered, at least 50% of surplus network revenue is directed to IO buybacks and permanent burns. io.net projects the IDE will remove at least 12 million IO tokens from circulation in its first year, with a longer-term target of retiring at least 115 million IO from the 231 million non-emitted reward pool.

The IDE launch coincided with io.net closing an $8 million enterprise contract for AI inference workloads. Monthly network earnings grew from approximately $250,000 in March 2026 to $1 million by May 2026. io.net reported a projected annual revenue run rate of $12.11 million as of June 2026, claiming the top position by revenue among active DePIN networks. The network processes more than 4 billion AI inference tokens daily as of that period.

Products and Integrations

io.net offers two primary products: IO Cloud, which provides on-demand GPU cluster provisioning for compute-intensive AI workloads, and IO Intelligence, an inference API for running language and multimodal models. The project is the leading DePIN-native inference provider listed on OpenRouter, a model aggregation platform that routes developer requests across multiple AI providers.

Documented integrations include Nillion (privacy-preserving multi-party computation), Theoriq (decentralized AI agent infrastructure), OpenLedger (data provenance for AI training), Filecoin (decentralized storage and compute bridging), Nesa (blockchain-native model hosting), Leonardo AI, and KREA (AI media generation). io.net also sources GPU supply from Render Network and Filecoin partner networks to expand available capacity.

Team and History

io.net was founded in 2022. Ahmad Shadid, the original CEO, departed on June 11, 2024 — the same day as the TGE — under circumstances that were not publicly detailed. Co-founder Tory Green stepped into the CEO role. The project has seen three CEO-level changes in under two years of operation.

Infrastructure and Decentralization Notes

Despite marketing positioning as an open source AI infrastructure platform, the IO Worker binary that suppliers run to connect hardware remains closed-source. The orchestration layer, matching engine, and API are centrally operated by io.net the company. On-chain governance and DAO voting are listed as future roadmap items but are not active as of mid-2026.

Security

In April 2024, io.net suffered a Sybil attack in which adversaries exploited a leaked authentication token to register fake GPUs and accumulate airdrop rewards. The team responded by temporarily shutting down metadata updates and deploying Proof-of-Work verification to flush spoofed devices. The incident raised questions about the reliability of reported GPU counts and verification methodology.