There are basically two strategies.
Get in the project early when it launches and gamble that it has a pump before it crashes, and exit at the right time to make a profit.
Look at the product the depin is trying to sell and assess if it is something unique you can’t get anywhere else or if there is a technical advantage over the other suppliers.
You can always play the numbers game with #1. You will win some, you will lose some…it’s a gamble and you try to read white papers to make an educated guess about which will TGE and earn something.
If you want to play it more safe then you need to look at option #2. There are a couple projects that fall into this category that are post-TGE.
Geodnet. They entered the market as a web3 option to the existing web2 players and are now the #1 RTK supplier worldwide. Their technical advantage was the web3 depin deployment model where they could put basestations everywhere at a fraction of the cost compared to web2 options, therefore offering RTK services at a fraction of the cost = capture more of the market. They are continuing to gain more and more revenue and marketshare. Notable mention here is Onocoy, is which a “copy” of Geodnet. Same idea with RTK and web3, but they basically have to sell cheaper than Geodnet. Regardless, Geodnet has proven the model for the RTK market and is now the worldwide leader, so Onocoy is likely to stay as a Geodnet alternative.
ROVR. They are the only company offering large worldwide bundles of LIDAR data for robotic autonomy training, and because of depin doing it at the fraction of the cost. Others offering this data are either extremely expensive, or their data is extremely limited.
Other notable mentions
Wingbits and 4DSKY. Both plane/drone tracking projects. This one is sort of a question about how valuable the data really is and can they really get large data sales. For example flightradar24 and flight aware will send stations out for free, and people who do this for a hobby setup stations and send them data for free…so the web3 depin model doesn’t offer a strong advantage here, other than paying for the data to encourage better installations. Also there are companies, such as the two I just mentioned, who are already big players in this space. How much cheaper/better can the depin options be? No one knows but we should find out soon with their TGEs in the near future.
Mastchain. They are the only AIS depin project, and according to their AMAs the market for AIS data is dominated but one very large supplier. This is a good type of example that follows Geodnet; it’s not new technology but the depin model helps encourage installations of new stations to build the network and allows for selling the data at a fraction of the cost. Hopefully the market agrees once they TGE.
Other than these I haven’t seen much that is really promising/unique/market advantage for other depin projects.