Decentralized Infrastructure Provider Grove Raises $7.9M

Decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) provider Grove, previously named Pocket Network Inc., has raised $7.9 million from Fidelity-affiliated Avon Ventures, Placeholder Capital and Druid Ventures.

Grove will use the funding to form new partnerships that advance DePIN toward mainstream adoption, according to an emailed statement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.

DePIN refers to the use of blockchain technology and token incentives to build physical infrastructure networks so other projects don’t need to incur the costs of buying and running their own equipment. In this sense, it can be seen as a decentralized version of Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud.

Grove provides Web3 infrastructure for building products and services atop its POKT network, which supports over 40 different chains.

The network’s native token (POKT) has a market cap of just over $150 million and is currently up some 24% in the last 24 hours at $0.10.

UPDATE (Nov. 30, 14:40 UTC): Adds “Inc.” to Pocket Network’s name in the first paragraph.