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It’s Friday afternoon, but we’re not leaving work early to get started buying $7 pints of Guinness. We have some exclusive DePIN news to share.

Here’s that story, along with an ICYMI roundup and the latest Lightspeed podcast:

Wi-Fi DePIN XNET announces AT&T partnership

XNET, a Solana-based project building a decentralized network of Wi-Fi hotspots, has partnered with US telecom giant AT&T. The collaboration will enable AT&T to offload mobile data traffic onto XNET’s network, the team told Lightspeed exclusively.

XNET sells Wi-Fi hotspots that businesses and public spaces can deploy in exchange for XNET token rewards. Together, the patchwork of hotspots makes up a distributed wireless network. XNET partners with cell carriers to offload mobile data onto its hotspots where available, easing network congestion and improving coverage — while the cell carriers pay XNET for the data.

Under the agreement with AT&T, which has been live since September 2024, AT&T wireless customers connect to XNET’s Wi-Fi network where available. AT&T pays XNET in dollars for the data usage, and XNET passes tokens along to its node operators.

According to a Dune dashboard, XNET currently has 688 active nodes, and around 9 million users have connected through its Wi-Fi offloading network. The handoff between AT&T’s coverage and XNET’s Wi-Fi is seamless, and most users have no idea it’s happening, XNET co-founder Richard DeVaul told me. He added that bootstrapping a business like XNET would have been difficult without a token.

“XNET is the poster child for DePIN. We financed millions of dollars of equipment on our network using our token, without conventional equity or debt financing,” DeVaul said in a text.

XNET has a similar feel to Helium Mobile, a popular DePIN company building a nationwide cellular network through token-incentivized hotspots. But while Helium lets individuals install hotspots at home, marketing lead Chris Banks said that XNET focuses exclusively on B2B services and restricts deployments to 'high-value locations to the carriers.'

“We see Helium as a potential customer, not a competitor. But [Helium Mobile CEO Amir Haleem] may have different ideas,” DeVaul said, adding a tongue-wagging emoji.

— Jack Kubinec

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Former Lightspeed host Dan Smith joined me for a roundup episode this week to discuss the launch of PumpSwap, Solana memecoin data, Tron flipping Solana in REV, and the STABLE act draft.

Enjoy!

ICYMI — Stories you may have missed from Solanaland this week:

• Kristin Smith is stepping down as CEO of the Blockchain Association to become president of the newly launched Solana Policy Institute. Smith is now years deep into shaping crypto's presence in DC, where she helped to turn the Blockchain Association into a formidable lobbying force. It'll be exciting to see how veteran leadership might bring Solana policy into deeper dialogue with US lawmakers. The hire reflects a trend of protocol-specific advocacy ramping up as the temperature of the regulatory landscape continues to rise.

• Grayscale has filed an S-1 with the SEC to convert its Solana Trust into a spot solana ETF. The move builds on its 19b-4 filing with the NYSE in December and follows the firm's successful bid to bring a bitcoin ETF to market. While approval is not guaranteed, the filing reinforces the narrative shift that Solana could have next-level staying power in US markets. A green light here would offer brokerages and institutions a compliant gateway to SOL, setting the stage for regulated inflows and deeper capital market integration.

• Fidelity's proposed spot solana ETF has also been formally acknowledged by the SEC. Dubbed the Fidelity Solana Fund, the ETF would trade as a commodity-based trust product similar to approved bitcoin funds. While it doesn't guarantee approval, Fidelity's entry represents a notable institutional bid to put SOL under the same regulatory umbrella as BTC. It also pressures the SEC to clarify its position on non-bitcoin crypto exposure in traditional finance.

• PayPal has added SOL to its growing list of crypto offerings. The move comes after a slow, cautious rollout of crypto products on the platform and follows PayPal's 2023 launch of its dollar-backed stablecoin on Ethereum and Solana. Despite a muted market reaction, the listing reflects a thaw in institutional risk appetite around SOL, especially after last year's SEC retreat from pursuing claims that it was an unregistered security.

• Jito has partnered with Sol Strategies following its acquisition of Laine, one of the Solana ecosystem's top validators and node operators. The move gives Jito substantial infrastructure support as it decentralizes MEV tip distribution through its TipRouter NCN. With Sol Strategies now helping secure that system, this partnership should boost both the performance and resilience of Solana's MEV supply chain. It also demonstrates the growing influence of well-capitalized infrastructure teams shaping the validator landscape.

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero: