A Deep Dive into PEAQ

Last week, we announced the PEAQ Token Launch on CoinList, live until May 16, 2024 at 17:00 UTC.

PEAQ is the native utility token of the peaq network, a multi-chain layer-1 blockchain built and optimized for DePIN and Machine RWA.

We recently spoke with the peaq team to discuss the current state of generative AI, the PEAQ token’s utility, how peaq empowers communities to own the technology they use, their team’s vision and growth strategy for the future, and more.

Let’s dive in.

1. What is peaq?

peaq is a layer-1 blockchain for DePIN and Machine RWAs (real-world assets). peaq is leading a global infrastructure revolution, empowering people to own and earn from mobility, energy, connectivity, environment, agriculture, and digital infrastructure. It is home to more than 25 applications in 10 industries, and 400,000+ devices, vehicles, machines, and robots (Machine RWAs) that run on them. peaq serves as permissionless, borderless digital infrastructure for increasingly intelligent machines to serve all of humanity – the 100%, not just the 1% – democratizing abundance in the Age of AI and job automation.

2. What problems and opportunities does it address?

Automation is expected to wipe out up to 375 million jobs by 2030, and the rise of generative AI is projected to add another 12 million to that just in the U.S. As increasingly intelligent machines take over more and more roles in the value creation chain, many millions of humans are at the risk of losing not just their jobs, but means to put food on the table. Automation is already here, but it’s only working for the limited circle of those at the very top.

Positioned at the intersection of IoT (expected to grow to $650 billion by 2027), AI (projected to surpass $350 billion by 2027), and Web3 industries, peaq envisions a more democratic and equitable future underpinned by individual ownership and empowerment. As a blockchain for real-world dApps, peaq was designed to make everyone a stakeholder in the distributed automated economy — the Economy of Things — shaping up before our very own eyes. As the home of DePIN, decentralized applications that use tokens to incentivize people to crowdsource and build connected real-world physical infrastructure, peaq enables communities to own and run the machines that serve them.

The examples of how peaq is already powering projects that make automation more inclusive include the world’s first tokenized robo-cafe, unveiled at TOKEN2049 in Dubai, which enables token holders to earn rewards from every cup of coffee it sells. Other major examples include Silencio, a 200,000+ user network for crowdsourcing noise pollution data, and a car-sharing service of tokenized Teslas by ELOOP Network.

3. How does peaq address concerns related to scalability, particularly as the network grows in terms of users, transactions, and data storage?

peaq’s current fundamentals offer a strong foundation for long-term growth and scaling:

• Transaction throughput: peaq's network initially supports around 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), offering robust performance from the outset. Looking ahead, peaq is poised to achieve theoretical scalability beyond 500,000+ TPS, courtesy of cutting-edge enhancements like asynchronous backing, elastic scaling, and agile core time.
• Nakamoto Coefficient: 90. peaq inherits its Nakamoto Coefficient from Polkadot's score by leveraging its security and decentralization. This is the highest score among major Web3 ecosystems, signifying a great degree of decentralization and resilience.
• Transaction Costs: $0.00025. peaq provides low transaction fees to the ecosystem, making it the perfect home for microtransaction-heavy apps leveraging real-world machines.
• Block time: 6 seconds. Theoretically, by harnessing the power of up to 24 cores, peaq has the potential to significantly reduce this block time to approximately 0.25 seconds.
• Additionally, peaq leverages the most sustainable tech stack in Web3 and, thanks to its EVM compatibility, taps into Web3’s two largest developer communities.

4. What is the role of the PEAQ token within the network, and how is it utilized for transactions, governance, or other functions?

Like with any other layer-1 blockchain token, $PEAQ’s primary utility is in enabling some of the most fundamental interactions on the network: paying transaction fees, producing blocks in a censorship-resistant way via a staking and slashing mechanism, and governing the network.

Here is more information on these utilities:

• Transaction fees: $PEAQ is used for transaction fee payment on the peaq blockchain. The amount of $PEAQ needed for any particular transaction is calculated based on the weight, length, and other parameters of the transaction. As with other layer-1 blockchains, it is impossible to use the network without $PEAQ, as no transactions can be carried out without paying the fee in $PEAQ. Just like with dApps on Ethereum, all transactions from DePINs on peaq will require a fee in $PEAQ. The millions of machines, vehicles, and sensors across these DePINs are expected to generate millions of transactions.
• Network operation: peaq relies on the work of Collators and Delegators for block production. To ensure that blocks are produced in an honest, censorship-resistant and reliable way, peaq has a staking mechanism that comes with a slashing mechanism, which incentivizes honest work from Collators and Delegators and punishes them for dishonesty. Collators need to provide a staking deposit to run a collator node to have “skin in the game”. If a collator misbehaves by, for example, censoring transactions or producing false blocks, their stake gets slashed. Delegators can delegate their stake to Collators of their choice in order to back them. Only those Collators with enough backing (stake) are able to produce blocks. Thus Delegators actively govern which Collators are producing blocks and can thereby ensure that trusted and well operating Collators are active. If the Collator misbehaves or goes offline, its Delegator stops earning or even gets their delegated stake slashed. Thus Delegators need to continuously check Collators’ behavior and manage their stake allocation actively.
• Network governance: Holding $PEAQ will enable you to gradually guide the project by voting on key decisions via on-chain governance concerning its development and future.
• Reputation system: Machine owners will be able to stake $PEAQ tokens as an extra guarantee of their machines’ trustworthiness.

5. What benefits do Machine RWAs provide for both institutional and retail users?

Machine RWAs are on-chain representations of real-world machines creating value or certain rights to these machines. They enable individuals, communities, and businesses to raise or provide cross-border liquidity for innovative projects making a real-world impact, and earn rewards stemming from real-world services and value. With real-world supply and demand mechanics, Machine RWAs offer a more sustainable alternative to more speculative Web3 assets. They also enable the application of conventional business metrics to tokens, which simplifies the decision-making for investors.  

6. What are some real-world use cases or projects that have already implemented or are planning to implement the peaq network, and what benefits have they observed?

Here are just some of the 25 projects already building on peaq as its layer-1 blockchain:

• ELOOP Network enables communities and businesses to tokenize their value-generating machines. It has already done that with a fleet of car-sharing Teslas in Vienna, enabling token holders to earn rewards every time someone books a Tesla for a ride.
• XMAQUINA is building a tokenization platform for revenue-generating autonomous robots, unveiling the world’s first tokenized robo-cafe on peaq in collaboration with ELOOP.
• penomo is building a tokenization platform for green energy assets, enabling cash-strapped sustainability businesses to tap the borderless Web3 liquidity.
• Wingbits is building a DePIN of community-owned antennas that collect location data from the planes in the area. It lets you earn rewards for participating in a Web3 Flightradar.
• ATOR is building a DePIN for anonymous Web browsing — it’s like TOR, but more decentralized and easy for anyone to join in.
• Silencio is building a DePIN for measuring local noise pollution with your phone. It’s easy to get involved with, and you get to earn rewards for collecting anonymized noise data.

7. RWA (real world assets) are all the rage in crypto these days. What is the most interesting trend in RWA that you’re seeing?

While RWAs have indeed risen to prominence as a major Web3 asset category, they are most commonly thought of as on-chain representations of traditional financial instruments, such as stocks or bonds. It’s true that such implementations make TradFi instruments more accessible and liquid, but it’s important that Web3 enthusiasts look and think beyond those assets. Web3 enables us to verifiably own things — any things, from smart sensors and Web hotspots to robots and self-driving trucks — in a peer-to-peer manner and redistribute the value created by such things via trustless on-chain mechanisms. This enables novel forms of ownership and co-ownership over dynamic, value-generating real-world assets — not just the regular stocks and securities — and that’s what peaq was built to deliver.

8. Recently we’ve seen a handful of DePIN projects, like MapMetrics and Farmsent, migrate over and integrate with peaq. What are some reasons that these teams have decided to integrate and move forward with peaq? What can other teams expect?

Just over the few last weeks, 3 projects announced their migration to peaq:

• MapMetrics, a leading Web3 drive-to-earn navigation app — from Solana.
• Farmsent, an agriculture-focused DePIN connecting farmers with local businesses without centralized middlemen — from Polygon.
• dTelecom, an innovative DePIN working as a live streaming and real-time communication layer for apps and dApps — from Arbitrum.

More DePINs will be announcing their migrations on peaq in the coming months following the mainnet launch.

Among the reasons driving projects to peaq, teams most commonly mention:

1/ The strong fundamentals with a lot of potential for scaling that give DePINs the affordable, fast, and reliable transactions they need to deploy and scale. peaq’s throughput currently stands at 10,000 transactions per second and could scale to 500,000+ TPS, with a minimal fee of just $0.00025 and a block time of 6 seconds, potentially decreasing all the way down to 0.25 second. Besides that, peaq has a Nakamoto Coefficient of 90, the highest measure in Web3, signifying a high degree of decentralization and security.

2/ As an EVM-compatible Substrate-based blockchain, peaq offers maximum developer friendliness, catering to two of the most popular Web3 developer ecosystems featuring the first and second most active developer communities. It also supports smart contracts both in ink! and Solidity, which makes it highly accessible for Web3 builders.

3/ peaq’s Modular DePIN Functions, pre-made building blocks for DePINs to tap as part of their architecture, enabling them to build faster. The Functions include:

• peaq ID, multi-chain self-sovereign Web3 identities for machines, robots, and devices,
• peaq access, a role-based access management protocol for machines and devices in Web3,
• peaq pay, seamless peer-to-peer machine payments in the Economy of Things,
• peaq verify, a comprehensive three-tier machine data verification framework for DePIN,
• peaq store, a data storage and management pallet for Web3 applications,
• AI Agents, autonomous AI agent software by Fetch.ai.

4/ peaq’s synergistic DePIN ecosystem enables partnerships, collaborations, and rapid integrations thanks to using the same identity standards, providing for great Machine Composability.

5/ peaq’s DePIN-friendly enterprise ecosystem enabling DePINs to work with the leading industry names, expanding their demand side.

6/ peaq’s community of DePIN enthusiasts, which is excited about new projects in the sector and thus makes for early adopters, helping DePINs build the supply side as well.

7/ peaq’s multi-chain Web3 strategy enabling wide cross-chain interoperability and bridging gives DePINs on peaq a wide reach across the entire Web3 space. When you build on peaq, you build for all of Web3 — important when you’re trying to reach as many people and machines as possible. Through Wormhole, peaq is bridged with more than 30 blockchain ecosystems, and peaq IDs are compatible with Ethereum, Polkadot, BNB Chian, Cosmos, and Solana.

8/ The Peaq Foundation offers DePINs building on peaq grants to support their development efforts and provides them with additional expert support, networking and fundraising opportunities, and various other benefits.

9/ peaq’s economic model is geared towards DePIN needs and intricately designed to cater to the imminent reality of growing automation, ensuring that as machines become more prevalent in our daily lives, they seamlessly integrate, operate, and thrive within the peaqosystem. peaq not only incentivizes node hosts, but also machines, DePINs, dApps, Liquidity Providers, and communities connecting their devices to the network. The rewards for all of these network participants will come primarily from transaction fees and block rewards. This enables DePINs on peaq to boost their own incentive mechanisms and scale faster compared to other ecosystems.

10/ peaq is one of the most energy-efficient chains in Web3 and taps the industry’s greenest technological framework.

11/ peaq’s sister network krest works as a production-grade incentivized sandbox for projects building on peaq, enabling DePINs to test their projects to perfection before launching them on the mainnet.

9. What is the best way to get involved in the peaq community?

The peaq Community Hub is a great starting place for joining in — it has all the links and information a peaqonaut needs to begin their journey. The conversation is the liveliest on peaq’s Discord, peaq’s Twitter/X handle is the best place for catching all the latest news and updates, and peaq’s blog is a knowledge hub for those who prefer longer reads. peaq’s Github will come in handy for those on the techie side, and the ultimate level of engagement is by actually joining the DePINs building on peaq. Mobile-based options such as Silencio or MapMetrics make for a good point of entry for a beginner DePIN enthusiast, and the more advanced DePIN aficionados may look into Wingbits.  

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