The Web3 network powering the Economy of Things, peak announces ecosystem expansion as Wicrypt Network, a decentralized mobile Internet sharing and monetization network, joins to democratize Web access. As part of the integration, Wicrypt will bring its network of more than 1,000 hotspots to krest, peaq’s canary network launching in Q2 2023, and peaq mainnet. It will also ship out every new device with a unique self-sovereign peaq ID, ready to connect with the peaq network.
Almost 3 billion people, or about one-third of the global population, lacks Internet access. This digital divide is present both on the macro level, with a gap in Web access between the developed and the developing worlds, and locally, with the more vulnerable communities and groups being underserved. This affects them in various ways, from putting them at an educational disadvantage to reducing their economic opportunities and prospects. The last-mile challenge — bringing the Web to a specific device — is a major piece of the puzzle driving the inequality of access.
Award-winning startup Wicrypt Network works to democratize Web access by enabling users, both private and businesses, to work as sub-providers of connectivity by sharing their connection with others — and earn rewards in tokens based on their hotspots’ usage stats. To do so, they must set up a Wicrypt hotspot device and join its decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) by staking Wicrypt’s $WNT tokens. With the hotspot up and running, they can choose to provide the connection free of charge or set custom fees in $WNT or the supported fiat currencies. Currently, Wicrypt’s DePIN counts over 1,100 hotspots and stretches across 30 countries, with some 25,000 accounts using more than 600TB of data.
The owners of these devices will now have the option to connect them with peaq network, which will work as the ledger storing their respective data consumption transactions. If choosing to do so, they will be able to use peaq’s machine rewards mechanism, which distributes a portion of network revenues between all connected devices to incentivize adoption. Wicrypt users will also be able to leverage peaq’s machine subsidization pools to crowdsource hardware purchases via borderless on-chain mechanisms.
Wicrypt will outfit the hotspots with unique peaq IDs off the shelf, making them easy to bring to peaq, and will enable users to claim their rewards for providing connectivity in $WNT tokens on peaq. At the initial stage, the integration includes peaq’s Agung testnet, but will also expand to krest once it goes live on Kusama after winning parachain slot auction #72. With the krest migration, the machine rewards mechanism will kick off. Later on, once peaq mainnet goes live on Polkadot, the integration will also expand there.
“The digital divide is a real scourge for underprivileged communities as it denies them the tools that could help them thrive,” says Ugochukwu Aronu, CEO of Wicrypt Network. “We’re working to distribute connectivity more evenly, and peaq grants our project a perfect home for that. Self-sovereign peaq IDs are crucial for device and user identification, and the machine rewards work as a power multiplier helping our network scale.”
“Web access is a must for any service leveraging connected devices, which makes it one of the crucial pillars for the Economy of Things,” says Till Wendler, co-founder of peaq. “Decentralizing Internet access is a clear-cut real-world opportunity for Web3, a field where it can bring true long-lasting positive impact and unlock new use cases. DePINs are a perfect mechanism for that, and we are excited to see Wicrypt’s work toward making Web access more equitable. Each of its hotspots can bring dozens of new devices to the network, exponentially amping up its growth.”
The announcement follows another major ecosystem update, with DappLooker joining the peaq Ecosystem Grant Program to enable advanced data analytics and visualizations in the peaq and krest ecosystems. Before that, bloXmove joined the peaq ecosystem to put ride-hailing on Web3 rails.
