Phase launches Proxy to enable smartphone-based AI connectivity

A startup called Phase has launched its Layer 1 blockchain mainnet alongside a new product called Phase Proxy, which turns ordinary smartphones into connectivity infrastructure for AI agents. The launch, which happened on or around October 29, 2026, marks one of the more concrete attempts to merge the decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) sector with the rapidly expanding AI agent economy.

The core idea is straightforward: AI agents often get blocked or rate-limited when their requests come from data center IP addresses. Phase Proxy routes those requests through real residential and mobile IPs supplied by smartphone users, letting agents operate more like a human browsing the web than a bot hammering a server.

How the network actually works

Anyone with an iOS or Android device can download the Phase app and start contributing to the network. There is no token staking requirement and no specialized hardware to purchase, which lowers the barrier to entry considerably compared to most DePIN projects.

Pricing for the proxy service starts at 0.5 USDT per 1,000 requests, bundled with 1 GB of traffic. For context, conventional mobile proxy services typically charge more than $5 per GB, meaning Phase is entering the market at a meaningfully lower price point.

Founder Kirill Eves, previously associated with the payments firm Unlimit, committed $45 million of his own capital to fund operations. That runway covers four years total, with the first two years fully funded and an additional two years covered without requiring outside investors.

Smartphones are not the obvious first choice for infrastructure work, but Phase makes a reasonable case for them. Flagship devices currently deliver AI performance between 35 to 45 TOPS, the metric used to measure how many trillion operations per second a chip can handle.

All revenue generated by the proxy service is committed to open-market buybacks of the PHASE token, creating a direct link between network usage and token demand.

What comes next for the platform

Phase Proxy is only the first of three planned products. Phase Router and Phase Compute are both expected to launch in November 2026. Phase Compute is the more ambitious of the two: it will use device resources to run open-weight AI models, essentially turning smartphones into distributed inference nodes.