Ping Network

Ping Network is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) built on Solana that aggregates unused internet bandwidth from ordinary devices worldwide and routes it to businesses that need reliable, globally distributed proxy access. Rather than leasing data center rack space, contributors install Ping mobile or browser apps and earn on-chain rewards simply by keeping their internet connection active, turning laptops, smartphones, routers, and enterprise servers into revenue-generating nodes on a shared bandwidth layer.

Core Mechanism

Ping operates as a rollup on Solana. The base chain handles token minting and burning, reward distribution, validator metadata storage, and governance state; a dedicated L2 layer runs smart contracts that manage node reputation, proof verification, and fraud detection. When a contributor connects through the Ping app, their node is automatically registered on-chain. Validators then verify node activity, track uptime performance, and enforce fair reward distribution without accessing user traffic content. The validator set integrates Jito restaking, allowing validators to lock liquidity and earn supplemental rewards alongside their verification duties.

Node consensus and governance logic are managed through Cambrian's Node Consensus Network (NCN) framework, which uses a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) model for validator coordination. In April 2025, Ping and Cambrian jointly launched the validator and rewards distribution infrastructure as an NCN on Solana Devnet, targeting a staged rollout through testnet and mainnet in 2025.

Node Types

Ping distinguishes two classes of participants:

• Edge Nodes — smartphones, laptops, and home routers. These act as residential proxies for AI-driven web scraping and data collection, providing genuine consumer IP addresses that are substantially harder for target sites to block than data center IPs.
• Server Nodes — dedicated hardware optimized for enterprise workloads such as VPN routing and high-throughput traffic management.

All nodes register automatically when they connect. Node operators are responsible for maintaining uptime; validators apply slashing mechanisms against nodes or validators that misbehave or produce fraudulent proofs.

Products and Services

On the contributor side, Ping offers apps for iOS, Android, and a Chrome browser extension. Contributors earn one Ping Point every ten minutes of active connection; a 15% referral bonus applies to points earned by invitees. Ping Points will convert into PING tokens at the Token Generation Event (TGE).

On the business side, Ping provides a dashboard and API giving access to a proxy pool spanning over 190 countries. The platform offers four proxy types: Mobile, Data Center, ISP, and Residential, priced from $0.30 per GB. Specialized scraper tools are available for major platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Amazon, Reddit, X, and YouTube. Target use cases include large-scale AI training data collection, ad fraud detection and verification, competitive price monitoring, and SEO performance research.

Token

The PING token had not launched as of mid-2025; the network operates on a points-based pre-token system in which contributors accumulate Ping Points redeemable for PING at TGE. Total supply and allocation schedules had not been publicly disclosed at the time of writing. The token's on-chain functions — minting, burning, and reward distribution — are handled on Solana.

Team and Funding

Ping Network was co-founded by Nazar Fazylov, Ed Patrikeev (CMO), and Andrey F. (CTO). The project raised a pre-seed round in December 2024 led by Native Crypto, with participation from Cogitent Ventures and more than 280 individual angels through the private investment platform Echo. The funding amount was not disclosed.

Network Scale

As of May 2025, Ping reported more than 200,000 contributors and over 200,000 application downloads across 190 countries. Community channels counted approximately 17,000 Discord members and over 60,000 X followers. The proxy pool claimed access to over one million proxy endpoints spanning that same geographic footprint.

Security

No third-party security audit has been publicly disclosed. Security measures documented in the architecture include end-to-end data encryption for user traffic, client authorization verification at the node level, and on-chain slashing penalties for validators that submit fraudulent proofs or go offline. The decentralized validator structure is designed to eliminate single points of failure present in centralized proxy providers, though the Cambrian NCN infrastructure on which the validator layer runs remained in devnet testing through early 2025.

Ecosystem Position

Ping sits within Solana's growing DePIN sector alongside projects that monetize physical resources — compute, storage, and wireless coverage — through on-chain coordination. Its differentiation is bandwidth: rather than GPU time or hard drive space, contributors contribute internet throughput. The Jito restaking integration ties Ping's validator incentives into Solana's broader liquid restaking ecosystem, and the Cambrian NCN framework provides the consensus tooling needed to coordinate a geographically dispersed, heterogeneous node set at scale. For Solana, Ping represents an expansion of DePIN use cases into the global proxy and VPN market, a segment historically dominated by centralized commercial providers.