Starpower

Starpower is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) built on Solana that aggregates distributed home energy devices — smart plugs, residential batteries, and EV chargers — into a coordinated Virtual Power Plant (VPP). By connecting everyday electrical appliances to a blockchain-settled energy marketplace, Starpower lets ordinary households participate in grid balancing and earn cryptocurrency rewards in return.

The Problem

Modern electricity grids face two compounding pressures: the inherent intermittency of renewable energy sources like solar and wind, and the surging power demands of AI data centers and electrified transportation. Traditional utility infrastructure centralizes both generation and control, leaving individual prosumers — households with rooftop solar panels, home batteries, or smart appliances — unable to monetize their idle capacity or contribute to grid stability. Starpower's answer is a protocol that turns dispersed consumer hardware into a coordinated network capable of absorbing surplus power, discharging stored energy on demand, and responding to grid signals within seconds.

How It Works

Starpower describes itself as a multistack protocol, combining smart IoT hardware, AI-driven energy management software, and Solana-settled incentives. At its core, the network runs on three reward mechanisms:

Proof of Connectivity rewards device owners simply for keeping their hardware online and reachable by the network. Proof of Capacity scales rewards according to the total energy capacity a device contributes — a large home battery earns more than a single smart plug. Proof of Response pays bonuses when devices successfully respond to a grid balancing signal — switching a water heater off during peak demand, for example, or discharging a battery when the local grid is stressed.

These three proof mechanisms together create a continuous incentive for owners to maintain their devices in network-ready condition, which in turn gives Starpower's grid-balancing layer a reliable, distributed resource pool to dispatch.

Hardware Products

Starpower manufactures and sells three hardware lines:

Starplug is the entry-level device: a plug-and-play smart outlet priced at $109 that handles loads up to 1,400W. It uses an ARM Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to attest device state on-chain, and connects any standard household appliance — air conditioner, water heater, or high-draw equipment such as a mining rig — to the Starpower network. Starplug was the first device to ship and drove the project's initial testnet activations.

Starbattery is a $4,000 home energy storage unit co-developed with WEIHENG, a Tier-1 battery manufacturer. It stores surplus solar generation or cheap off-peak grid electricity and releases it on demand, either to the home or back to the grid as a VPP resource. The battery layer enables Proof of Capacity rewards at scale that a smart plug alone cannot generate.

Starcharger is an EV charger currently in development with planned support for bi-directional (vehicle-to-grid) charging, which would allow parked electric vehicles to serve as mobile grid buffers.

In January 2026, Starpower and partner GreenGiga announced the GVP01 AI Home Battery, a device that uses AI-driven price arbitrage to automatically charge and discharge based on electricity spot prices, while connecting to the BeeGrid Energy Cloud as a VPP node. Users earn STAR tokens for each grid-balancing event the GVP01 participates in.

STAR Token

The native STAR token is the settlement layer for all network rewards. Token distribution allocates 15% each to the core team and investors, 7% to foundation operations, with the remainder directed at network builders, climate initiatives, and community airdrops. Early testnet participants earned approximately 22 STAR per device per week. A Genesis Airdrop Campaign distributed 30 million STAR tokens to early users, testnet participants, and Pioneer Pass NFT holders. STAR was listed on KuCoin in May 2026.

Pioneer Pass NFTs played an important role in the project's early community building: the NFT collection generated over 7,777 SOL in trading volume and saw a 70x price surge on its launch day, establishing an engaged holder base before the main network launched.

Team and Funding

Starpower was co-founded in 2023 by Laser Ding and Dr. Darcy Jia. Ding previously served as Chairman Assistant at HashKey Group and was an early Ethereum investor. Jia holds a PhD in Photovoltaics and a background in computer science, bringing direct expertise in the solar energy hardware side of the project.

The project has raised approximately $4.5 million across two rounds. A pre-seed round of roughly $2 million, led by Alliance DAO and joined by Arweave, IoTeX, and Basis Ventures, closed in mid-2024. In January 2025, Framework Ventures led a $2.5 million follow-on round, with Solana Ventures and Bitscale Capital participating. The Solana Foundation has been a consistent supporter, and Starpower's DePIN model was featured in joint commentary with the Foundation on the future of energy infrastructure.

Scale and Traction

The network has grown rapidly since testnet. The project reached 10,000 on-chain activations globally by mid-2024, a milestone it cited as making it the largest energy-focused DePIN by activated device count at the time. By early 2025, The Block reported 1.5 million registered wallets and over 16,000 activated devices, alongside $1 million in revenue. More recent figures put connected devices above 1 million spread across 792 cities in 79 countries.

Hardware development continues: as of August 2026, Starpower's team is actively working on a new product form factor, with photos of the casing molding process shared publicly on its official account.

Solana Ecosystem Fit

Starpower is one of the highest-profile energy DePIN projects on Solana. Its use of Solana's settlement layer for near-real-time reward distribution aligns with the network's throughput and low-fee characteristics, which matter for a protocol that must process millions of small reward events across a global device fleet. The project works within the broader DePIN thesis on Solana alongside connectivity, compute, and mobility networks, and has drawn support from Solana Ventures and public recognition from the Solana Foundation. Starpower's roadmap targets integration with major energy hardware brands including Tesla, BYD, and SolarEdge, positioning it as an open aggregation layer rather than a closed hardware ecosystem.