Image by Satyress from Pixabay
A commercial franchise is a contract by which a franchisor authorizes a franchisee to use a trademark and a series of procedures for producing and selling a product of which the franchisor is the legitimate owner. I spent my entire business life working in this industry through my own company, developing brands and franchises, having taken Argentine brands to more than 40 countries. Now I am retired and I am fully committed to the crypto ecosystem, as a consultant, trader, and investor.
But lo and behold, the past sends me a message so that I do not forget the beautiful times of development and conquest of territories with brands and franchises.
One of the most emblematic brands in the world of fast food franchising is entering the DePIN revolution.
Glenn William Bell Jr. opened his first Taco Bell in 1962 with $4,000 in Downey, California. He outlined his business plan including the idea of selling franchises of his brand and its procedures. He sold his first franchise in Torrance, California. The chain's growth was exponential. By 1967 it had 100 branches. Bell sold his company to PepsiCo in 1978 for $125 million. PepsiCo managed the brand until 1997, when it separated its fast food division of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC and created Tricon Global Restaurants, which in 2002 became Yum! Brands. Taco Bell is the third fastest-serving fast food chain in the United States. In 2022, it opened a drive-thru location with four lanes and two floors. It represents 25% of Yum! Brands' total revenue and it has more than 8,000 locations in 30 countries.
A franchise chain can be considered a distributid units network with nodes located territorially in different geographic locations. In this way, the transmission of data between these nodes can be encoded for some particular purpose, and this data can be made to work according to an agreed-upon consensus protocol to achieve some goal. So, you have a network already in place, waiting for someone to plan how new information can be obtained from these nodes already in place.
This fits perfectly into the concept of DePIN. I wrote a post a few weeks ago right here on Publish0x about the concept of DePIN. Taco Bell's entry into DePIN clearly shows the rapid way in which physical networks already in place will be leveraged. This may become the most common way of developing business in the coming decades, in the same way that the "invention" of the franchising system created by McDonald's in 1956 changed the way of distributing products and services around the planet.
We can consider that the first outline of a DePIN network was presented by Helium. This is a decentralized project for wireless devices in the growing field of IoT. It is designed to interconnect IoT devices efficiently and at low cost. The Helium network was launched in 2019 and has grown a lot, although not at the expected pace, probably due to lack of momentum. But the entry into the industry of a giant like Taco Bell with more than 8,000 nodes distributed throughout the planet, may be showing the potential of the DePIN ecosystem and its possible growth. Helium's growth is based on its unique incentive model, which rewards users (miners?) who install and maintain Helium “Hotspots”, which are devices that provide network coverage and verify transactions on the Helium blockchain.
Helium Hotspots not only provide connectivity, but also act as nodes on the blockchain, participating in transaction validation and network security. Users who wish to contribute to the network can purchase a Hotspot and in return receive rewards in HNT. This cryptocurrency not only serves as a reward for those who contribute to the network, but is also used to pay for transactions and services within the Helium ecosystem. HNT “mining” does not require powerful computing equipment. Instead, it relies on the installation and operation of Hotspots, which perform critical functions for the network. This is undoubtedly a trend that will spread rapidly in the coming years, with many projects of this type.
Despite its innovative approach and rapid growth, Helium faces challenges and criticism, especially regarding network security and the centralization of ownership of Hotspots. Helium must ensure that its infrastructure is resistant to attacks and vulnerabilities. The privacy of data transmitted over the network is also a major concern, given the sensitive nature of information from IoT devices.
However, Helium’s impact goes beyond technology and cryptocurrencies. By providing a connectivity infrastructure for IoT devices, Helium is paving the way for mass adoption of smart technologies in homes, cities, and businesses. The field of application is endless. For example, in healthcare, medical devices connected to the Helium network can transmit real-time data to healthcare professionals. Implementing IoT sensors in machinery and manufacturing processes can increase productivity and reduce operating costs in any industry. But of course, social and ethical challenges arise related to data privacy, cybersecurity, and equity in access to technology. There is a great need to ensure that the benefits of IoT connectivity are accessible and equitable for all.
But it is undeniable that Helium may have opened the doors to an IT revolution. The growing adoption of IoT technologies powered by Helium opens up new opportunities for innovation and economic development in emerging sectors such as smart agriculture, urban mobility and sustainable energy. And also fast food and franchising systems in general, these being physical distributed chains par excellence. In fact, the DePIN narrative is spreading to numerous categories, such as car mapping and data, to the world of hospitality, and also food.
The integration of DePIN devices such as sensors, routers and other IoT devices, powered by blockchain technology and the incentive through digital tokens, totally changes the paradigm of fast food. Franchising chains have the potential to become cutting-edge ecosystems in which all stakeholders are rewarded for their participation, computing their activity in real time and with the security and transparency offered by a blockchain system. The vast number of restaurants already installed that can be leveraged to install this new mapping, data collection and processing system gives us an idea of the revolution that DePIN can produce in fast food. Obviously, the DePIN environment is not limited to food, but can be applied to any type of network that is already installed or is going to be installed, such as energy distribution networks, fishing boat fleets, meteorological drone networks, health care centers, police…
For example, if DePIN devices that can monitor air quality are installed in a restaurant, environmental conditions can be operated in real time, improving them and saving a data chain of the operation to investigate new sensors. In the same way, DePIN devices in kitchen facilities can give us a clear idea of what happens in the production of the food we consume in real time, and record them in a blockchain without the possibility of being altered. This could be achieved by offering incentives to miners who are involved in validating the data that is being produced in real time. If suppliers are incorporated into a system like this, then the variables of product delivery can be improved, enabling a blockchain-based supply management that ensures freshness and quality. Imagine the cost improvement that all this well-managed information could bring to a fast food chain with more than 8,000 restaurants installed and operating on the planet.
In other words, the natural evolution of decentralization and tokenization technologies is showing, with the help of DePIN, the potential of physical assets already installed. Satoshi Nakamoto (I think) would never have imagined the revolution that his proposal could cause in franchising chains.
Conclusion
We are in the middle of a change of eras, a crossroads that has been gifted to us and that it would be very sad to waste. Blockchain technology allows us to take advantage of the physical assets already installed through a discourse called DePIN, which can not only improve the operating conditions of those assets, but also allows them to create new ways of analyzing what is happening inside those establishments to reduce costs and increase ROI.
But there is also a new business for miners, who by validating the data provided by the IoT sensors installed inside the restaurants, generate daily income for themselves from digital tokens that can be traded in the ecosystem.
Tokens like HNT (Helium) may be facing a very promising future.
Thank you for visiting!
