Recently, the development of the DeWi track project Roam ecosystem has been continuously highlighted, with the number of self-built nodes recently surpassing 980,000, making it the largest DePIN project by node scale. At the same time, one month after the launch of its eSIM product, the ecosystem has experienced explosive growth in users, increasing from 750,000 to over a million. As Roam's popularity continues to grow, "fake mining machines" claiming to be associated with Roam have also appeared in the market.
Roam's "Fake Mining Machine" Controversy
Not long ago, Twitter KOL @SEFATUBA3 revealed that many users encountered scammers when purchasing mining machines on Roam's Discord. These scammers impersonated Roam Foundation employees in the Discord group and guided users interested in buying mining machines to purchase their counterfeit devices, which were mostly sold in South Korea and Taiwan. They also advised users looking to buy mining machines to only use official channels like https://weroam.xyz/ or the official Twitter @weRoamxyz.
It is reported that several mining machines currently for sale by Roam, including the latest AC device Rainier MAX60 router and AP device Baker MAX30, are in high demand, while fake mining machines can sell thousands in a single day, indicating their popularity.
In fact, at an event held in South Korea on December 3, a connection to the Roam Foundation was promoted, involving a company from Taiwan and a Korean company, both claiming to be Asian manufacturers and distributors. Although the event was packed due to its association with Roam, the Roam Foundation quickly clarified that its employees did not participate in the event and were not aware of its content. Additionally, the individual introduced as a Roam Foundation employee at the event had no affiliation with the foundation. These impersonators of Roam Foundation staff, distributors, and manufacturers may be the source of the counterfeit mining machines flooding the market.
Furthermore, the Roam Foundation provided further clarification, stating that it has no partnership with Amazon, and the Amazon Point Coin project introduced at the Korean event is unrelated to the Roam Foundation, with the official website being the only channel for mining machine sales. The Taiwanese company’s claims of manufacturing and distributing "Roam mining" devices are also untrue; Roam's official products are limited to Roam OG Miner, MAX60, and MAX30 devices, and the foundation strictly manages the manufacturing and distribution of Roam devices globally.
Thus, the truth behind the fake mining machine incident is becoming clearer, and it also highlights the global influence and popularity of the Roam ecosystem.
Why is the Roam Project So Popular?
Roam (formerly MetaBlox) is a project in the DeWi track that began deepening its efforts in this field in 2021. As the only Web3 IDP project among the 15 corporate alliances in the WBA OpenRoaming™ program, it aims to address the pain points encountered by the organization in promoting the OpenRoaming™ program globally, including lack of widespread participation, cost and profitability issues, limited coverage, high device compatibility requirements, and low access rates.
For users unfamiliar with OpenRoaming™, the program is an open wireless network standard designed to simplify the automatic connection experience to Wi-Fi networks worldwide, allowing users to connect seamlessly without entering passwords through authenticated identities. It ensures smooth and secure access across multiple Wi-Fi networks by enabling interoperability between devices, network providers, and user identities.
From Roam's perspective, it is a Wireless driven by DePIN, establishing a Web3 protocol layer among Wi-Fi networks, OpenRoaming, and users. This protocol layer not only supports enterprise users or individuals with network capabilities (bandwidth or Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities) but also allows them to join OpenRoaming as distributed nodes through Roam routing devices or mobile devices, providing free services to users with Wi-Fi network needs while earning token incentives from the Roam network to drive growth.
Becoming a Roam Node: Exploring New Profit Models and Reducing Network Costs
For enterprise and individual users, they can share and fully utilize network resources in the form of Wi-Fi through Roam's hardware devices. The Roam network itself, as a distributed system, allows all device holders to access the network and become nodes, enabling everyone to explore new profit models and meet the urgent need to reduce network costs. Consequently, the network also possesses good scalability from the bottom up.
Taking its latest Rainier MAX60 router as an example, this device has a low entry barrier for small and medium-sized enterprises and individual users. The device integrates Wi-Fi 6 high-speed transmission technology, providing network speeds of up to 9.6 Gbps, capable of connecting over 200 devices simultaneously, achieving seamless sharing in multi-user environments, utilizing advanced low-power design, and featuring 2TB of expandable storage, while also pioneering support for DApp applications, capable of running decentralized applications such as CDN, network storage, VPN, and AI. Users can easily share router nodes on the Roam network, enhancing coverage and reception range, providing and enjoying a smooth and efficient network connection experience. It can serve as an edge computing and connectivity center for many households and small businesses, providing efficient and secure support for large-scale data transmission.
In terms of mining, activating the Roam Rainier MAX60 mining machine for the first time can earn 3,000 Roam Points, with the router generating a fixed output of 60 Roam Points daily, and daily check-ins can earn an additional 5 Roam Points. With the Roam TGE, users can exchange points for ROAM tokens. In fact, during the ABS 2024 Asia Blockchain Summit, Roam has already airdropped a total of 20 million ROAM tokens to users who purchased various Roam mining machines before the TGE and early MetaBlox NFT holders, rewarding them for their contributions to the early network ecosystem of the project, which may have raised user expectations for becoming Roam nodes.
At the same time, Roam currently provides services to over 196 countries and regions, with the number of self-built nodes exceeding 980,000, making it the largest ecosystem by node scale among all DePIN projects. This positive data is also expected to serve as a basis for the future listing of ROAM tokens, further raising user expectations for the returns of becoming Roam nodes.
Thus, the growing ecosystem with potential profit expectations is making it difficult to obtain devices from Roam without large-scale marketing.
Meeting Users' Network Resource Needs in a Free and Flexible Manner
From the perspective of users with network connection needs, in today's highly internetized world, the internet is becoming a necessity. Compared to traditional paid internet usage business models, Roam is transforming internet resources from paid to free, while allowing users to seamlessly enjoy the services contributed by Roam's network resources in a more flexible and convenient manner.
To enable users to join the network and obtain services more conveniently and flexibly, Roam has launched decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and corresponding verifiable credentials (VCs). Based on DID/VCs credentials, users can gain the ability to switch seamlessly within public Wi-Fi networks without repeated authentication or registration.
Users can easily synchronize configurations between devices through the Roam APP or re-acquire configuration files when changing devices, without needing to go through a complex setup process again. In this way, Roam is establishing a unified, user-centric global Wi-Fi open roaming network that connects different Wi-Fi networks seamlessly.
At the same time, VC/DID, as Web3.0 Wi-Fi credentials, is at the core of the Roam ecosystem, allowing for a virtuous cycle of network construction driven by token incentives, controlling the deployment and expansion of globally distributed wireless access networks, and generating valuable "3W" data - detailing who is connecting, when they are connecting, and where the connections are taking place. This also expands the narrative direction for the ecosystem, providing a foundation for building the Roam Growth product system.
Thus, we see that providing free, flexible, and widespread Wi-Fi services not only meets urgent needs but also directly addresses the pain points of traditional internet services. Users can not only join OpenRoaming Wi-Fi for free but can also share their Wi-Fi networks at any time through mobile devices with hotspot capabilities, earning RoamPoints rewards based on their contributions during the sharing process, and receiving airdrops after the TGE. A series of factors have enabled the formation of network effects in a short period, which is key to its popularity in the market.
eSIM Product: Seamless Switching Between Wi-Fi and Cellular Networks, Significantly Reducing International Roaming Communication Costs
At the same time, Roam has also launched the Roam eSIM, which can be used in over 160 countries, cleverly achieving seamless switching between Wi-Fi and cellular networks. In fact, international data roaming fees are extremely high, often reaching $5-10/MB, and in extreme cases even higher, with 1GB of data potentially costing thousands of dollars. As the tourism and business travel industries continue to grow, the demand for international data roaming services is becoming increasingly urgent.
The Roam network and its eSIM product are precisely at the forefront of this demand. Thanks to the support of the Roam network, users can interact within the Roam Network to receive free data through the Roam APP, or recharge data using USDT and cash. The eSIM product has also significantly reduced communication costs for users with international roaming network needs. The launch of the eSIM product has become a catalyst for the further growth of the Roam ecosystem, with user numbers exploding from 750,000 to over a million just one month after the product's launch, and currently, the Roam network has around 1.7 million registered users.
Moreover, it is not only becoming the best example of driving large-scale Web3 implementation but also further proving that DePIN and Web3 are not false propositions.
Next Steps in the Development of the Roam Ecosystem: Launching the Roam Growth Product to Build a Web3 Telecom Data Network Ecosystem
Roam does not aim to profit by selling network services like other DeWi projects such as Helium and Wicrypt, but rather seeks to achieve profitability through data and application layers.
In fact, at this new stage of ecosystem development, Roam has already accumulated 1.7 million registered users, representing a trusted Web3 data pool based on DID/VCs, with over 980,000 self-built nodes, providing a foundation for the operation of the data ecosystem. Backed by a strong moat, the timing for Roam to build a Web3 telecom data network ecosystem has matured. The launch of Roam Growth is becoming the "final push" for Roam to move towards its ecosystem vision.
Roam Growth is the most important and critical module product in Roam's ecosystem development plan, aimed at creating sustainable income for participants in the Roam Network, supporting users to collaborate with other developers, and promoting innovation and ecosystem construction for decentralized network applications.
From the user's perspective, the Roam Growth platform helps users transform network devices, such as Roam routers, into powerful economic tools through automated service integration and seamless network connectivity.
For example, users can utilize Roam mining machines to achieve CDN services, WiFi mining, and other functions to obtain continuous income. It is understood that the first phase of Roam Growth's product is a router purchase plan through Huma loans, where users can stake SOL to quickly obtain loans from the Huma platform for purchasing Roam's Wi-Fi hardware devices, thereby participating in the construction of a global decentralized Wi-Fi network and earning RoamPoints rewards.
As the value flywheel driven by economic incentives continues to turn, the scale of the Roam communication network is further expanding, and it is becoming the largest Web3 telecom data pool.
Roam Telecom Data Layer
Roam is building the Roam Telecom Data Layer, positioned to serve the DePIN ecosystem as a Physical L1. By deeply linking modules such as Roam Network, Roam Growth, Roam Discovery, and Roam Community, this layer further realizes the incentive construction of the network, continuous income generation for network participants, support and incubation for connectable or embedded projects, and community governance. Through the existing decentralized Wi-Fi roaming network and DID+VCs verification mechanism, it connects and shares data among people, devices, assets, and AI while ensuring the security and privacy of user data, collectively creating a cohesive and highly interactive BoT (Blockchain of Things) ecosystem.
The Roam Telecom Data Layer is providing a foundation for further development in the IoE field. IoE (Internet of Everything) is an expanded concept of the Internet of Things (IoT). While IoT mainly focuses on the connection between devices, i.e., machine-to-machine communication, IoE further encompasses comprehensive network connections between people, processes, data, and things. IoE not only drives the emergence of new business models and application scenarios, such as smart cities, smart transportation, and telemedicine, but also promotes the digital transformation of various industries. In fact, user data security and privacy are becoming significant concerns in internet-related fields, and there are also certain issues with interoperability and scalability in the IoE field.
The Roam Telecom Data Layer provides long-term support for IoE in areas such as unified standards, data support, and privacy compliance, truly achieving comprehensive communication and data sharing, thereby building a Web3 perceptual network of everything.
In the long run, the Roam ecosystem is also becoming an important infrastructure in the AI field. In fact, DePIN and underlying public chains are essentially not different in data structure, which allows the Roam system to achieve high compatibility with the AI field. In the future, Roam is expected to further expand the application scenarios of intelligent IoE through collaborations with multiple AI vertical projects.
The early DeWi system is continuously reaching developmental milestones, marking Roam's successful transformation from 0 to 1. As the narrative of the Roam ecosystem further expands, Roam is also moving towards a new development stage from 1 to 10. With products like Roam Growth and Roam Telecom Data Layer gradually entering the market, the Roam ecosystem is becoming a crucial Web3 infrastructure in the forefront of technology, which will bring a new round of growth and explosion to the Roam ecosystem.