Fundamentals Take Center Stage at ETHDenver

At this year’s ETHDenver, one theme stood out: the importance of fundamentals in Web3. While the market in general was characterized by caution and negative sentiment, the atmosphere around ETHDenver was considerably more positive. While past cycles saw explosive growth driven by hype and speculation, the industry is now maturing, and projects that deliver real-world utility are separating themselves from the noise.

There is a healthy skepticism around web3 and AI, which wasn’t there before. AI in its current form is not a panacea. The days of just bolting AI onto any project are long gone; investors, developers, and users are prioritizing sound fundamentals and tangible utility.

At Auki, we’ve always believed that real-world utility is what will drive long-term success. In this post, we’ll explore how we are working to achieve this and how our business development, partnerships, and incubator are all geared toward driving real-world adoption.

Fundamentals Matter

Speculation is out, fundamentals are in. ETHDenver 2025 made it clear: the cycle is back to focusing on fundamentals. - Santeri Aramo, Founder & COO

ETHDenver 2025 underlined its importance as one of the biggest Ethereum events of the year. This year’s edition was characterized by a shift towards practical utility, sustainability and revenue generating projects in place of speculative DePIN plays. In other words, a clear shift to fundamentals:

• Technology: Does the project offer a real technological innovation or improvement?
• Tokenomics: Is the token designed for sustainable use, or is it purely speculative?
• Adoption: Are people actually using the network, and is there real demand?
• Utility: Is the project meeting a need in the market?

Fundamentals matter because, without them, projects collapse when hype fades. The 2022-2023 bear market was a stark reminder that many crypto projects lacked real substance—overleveraged DeFi protocols imploded, NFT projects disappeared, and countless tokens lost 90%+ of their value. However, the projects that focused on fundamentals survived and even thrived. This is the foundation that we are building upon.

How Auki is Doubling Down on Fundamentals

At Auki, we’re building the protocol for decentralized, collaborative spatial computing. Our focus is on the Auki network, a decentralized machine perception network that enables seamless, real-time collaboration between robots, AI and devices in physical environments.

The potential applications for this technology are vast, there are so many use cases that it can be difficult to get across a simple, bite-size application: the Auki network can power a supermarket, an autonomous warehouse with interoperable robots or a shared, app-free multimedia AR experience. As a result, it would be easy to just focus on the endless possibilities of spatial computing and physical AI, indefinitely.

However, we’re focused on proving the utility of the protocol in the short term with some practical commercial applications. These projects are of course aligned with our longer term goals:

• Technological Innovation: We continue to develop the underlying technology of the Auki network to improve AR precision, reduce latency and add new features like decentralized visual positioning, setting new standards in AR spatial computing. We have had multiple patents accepted in the past year and more pending.
• Scalability & Adoption: We are developing robust APIs and SDKs to ensure that developers can build applications on the Auki network, fostering an ecosystem where real-world use cases flourish. These amazing apps are supplementing the use cases that we are focusing on internally. Our SDK 2.0 is planned for release later this year and will be a major milestone for the network.
• Sustainable Tokenomics: Unlike many projects that rely on inflationary rewards or unsustainable yields, the $AUKI token is designed to have real utility within the ecosystem. We have outlined the rationale behind our tokenomics in a previous post [link], but we think our approach aligns our interests and serves our community long-term.

In DePIN, your community is the infrastructure. Without long-term incentives, there is no network. - Santeri Aramo, Founder & COO

How Auki is Focusing on Utility: Business Development, Partnerships, and Incubation

Building a strong foundation is just the beginning. Real adoption happens through strategic partnerships, developer support and developing products that meet a need in the market. Here’s how we’re making it happen:

1. Business Development & Real-World Integrations

We have chosen to focus on two commercial products to generate revenue and drive adoption: Cactus for retail and app-less navigation for commercial properties. We are actively working with businesses in retail, logistics, and AR-driven consumer experiences. We are coming to the end of our first customer implementation of Cactus and will soon be able to make an announcement. We are also piloting both Cactus and app-less navigation with customers in America, Europe and Asia, so stay tuned for more announcements here in the coming months.

We are also investigating new applications such as privacy-preserving, anonymized in-store analytics, visual product recognition and various implementations of retail focused robots, to name but a few, however we are staying laser-focused on deploying our current solution on the market and proving it’s real-world utility.

2. Strategic Partnerships

Partnerships are crucial for scaling adoption. That’s why we’ve joined forces with leaders in robotics and enterprise software, ensuring that the Auki network is supported and integrated seamlessly. These collaborations are enabling our technology to make an impact across industries such as construction, logistics, manufacturing, care-giving and beyond.

Currently, the deployment of robots tends to compartmentalize their knowledge, with each robot largely operating independently. However, by enabling them to share and receive information within a spatially mapped environment, we open the door to true collaboration. This not only enhances their ability to work together more effectively but also reduces the cognitive compute load, allowing them to focus more intently on their specific tasks, accelerating development and leading to improvements in efficiency and performance. - Phil Shaw, Head of Robotics

Things are moving very quickly in this space, both in terms of robot and wearable tech integrations. We will be posting an update on the latest developments with devices and robotics in the coming weeks.

3. Incubating the Next Wave of Innovations

To further expand our impact, we’re both supporting projects built on the Auki network through our developer grants program and  creating an incubator to support promising early-stage AR and spatial computing projects. By providing funding, resources, and mentorship, we’re accelerating the development of the next generation of decentralized applications built on the Auki network. Some of these will be working in the newly built incubator space in our Level 10 headquarters.

We have just granted our first two developer grants and will be featuring their projects on the blog shortly.

The Future Belongs to Projects with Real Utility

As the crypto industry matures, the projects that will thrive are those that offer real, tangible value. Auki is committed to building an ecosystem where spatial computing, physical AI and blockchain merge to create meaningful, real-world applications.

The lessons from ETHDenver are clear: Fundamentals matter now more than ever. At Auki, we’re not just following this trend—we’ve been leading the charge from the start. Join us as we build the next era of decentralization.

アウキ・ラボについて

Aukiはポーズメッシュという地球上、そしてその先の1000億の人々、デバイス、AIのための分散型機械認識ネットワークを構築しています。ポーズメッシュは、機械やAIが物理的世界を理解するために使用可能な、外部的かつ協調的な空間感覚です。

私たちの使命は、人々の相互認知能力、つまり私たちが互いに、そしてAIとともに考え、経験し、問題を解決する能力を向上させることです。人間の能力を拡大させる最も良い方法は、他者と協力することです。私たちは、意識を拡張するテクノロジーを構築し、コミュニケーションの摩擦を減らし、心の橋渡しをします。

ポーズメッシュについて

ポーズメッシュは、分散型で、ブロックチェーンベースの空間コンピューティングネットワークを動かすオープンソースのプロトコルです。

ポーズメッシュは、空間コンピューティングが協調的でプライバシーを保護する未来をもたらすよう設計されています。いかなる組織の監視能力も制限し、空間のプライベートな地図の自己所有権を奨励します。

分散化はまた、特に低レイテンシが重要な共同ARセッションにおいて、競争優位性を有します。ポスメッシュは分散化運動の次のステップであり、成長するテック大手のパワーに対抗するものです。

アウキ・ラボはポスメッシュにより、ポーズメッシュのソフトウェア・インフラの開発を託されました。

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