Imagine a caveman.

Let’s call him Ugg.

Ugg points at a rock and grunts something that roughly translates to, “This is a chair.”

Ugg’s friends scratch their chins and watch.

Ugg sits. Stands. Smiles.

He sits again, this time with confidence.

They agree.

“Yes, chair.”

At that moment, Ugg wasn’t just making conversation—he was augmenting reality.

He was slapping an extra layer of meaning on top of a (presumably) indifferent chunk of the universe.

And boom, just like that, language (and the world’s first chair) was born.

An Augmented World

Fast-forward a few thousand years, and we’re still doing the same thing.

Dollars? Pieces of paper and numbers in cyberspace—until we all agree it's money.

Brands? Logos and colors, until we all agree they represent value, trust, or status.

Credit scores? Numbers in a database, until we all agree they determine trustworthiness.

These symbols are the scaffolding of reality. Turning raw existence into something we can navigate, interpret, and control.

The moment we started agreeing that “rock is chair” and “this cave home,” we stopped reacting to reality and started constructing it.

Every technology since has been an upgrade to this fundamental feature: books, printing presses, the internet, and now AI.

Each iteration prior has made the world more travelable, more understandable, and more programmable.

But there’s one iteration coming that barely anyone’s talking about…

Despite it being potentially the biggest one yet.

It’s called “spatial computing.”

The Real Problem with AI: It’s Blind

Right now, AI can answer your emails, draw a picture of a cat wearing a spacesuit, and (maybe) help optimize your stock portfolio…

But ask it to pour a glass of water and you’ll get something between a minor inconvenience and a major insurance claim.

The reason? AI doesn’t have perception.

Historically, humanity has solved major technological challenges by making information accessible at scale:

• The printing press made books widely available.
• The internet made knowledge instantaneously accessible.
• Blockchain is making transactions trustless and decentralized.

These innovations didn’t just spread information—they reshaped how we perceive and use it.

But now, we face a new challenge: making the physical world accessible to information.

The Internet of Perception

Again, the problem: AI has no reliable way to interact with its surroundings.

Some people want to fix this.

To do so, they’ve concluded we need a “machine perception network”—a system that allows AI to sense the real world, in real time, with the same nuance and precision as humans.

A new “internet of perception.”

Thing is, you don’t want one country, company, or entity owning the entire thing. (Not ideal.)

That’s where DePIN comes in -- or Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks.

Although a mouthful, it’s one of the most interesting sectors in crypto.

And it’s the missing link that could turn AI from an abstract computational force into a fully integrated part of the physical world.

Better yet…

Instead of a handful of corporations owning AI’s eyes and ears… 

DePIN has the potential to distribute perception across millions of devices.

And there’s only ONE project in crypto with the potential to make it work (and in a way that isn’t full-on Black Mirror).

Early Stage Crypto Investor members received an email today titled, “Our Top 5 Cryptos Right Now”.

This crypto was one of those five.

Language lets us overlay meaning onto reality. And now, DePIN has the potential to overlay perception.

If we’re right?

Well, spotting the shift early makes all the difference.