Machines exist in four key domains, land, sea, sky and space. The machine economy therefore also exists across these domains. That’s a lot of machines, doing a lot of different things in a lot of different places.

While it is certainly tempting for us to dream of the community building dApps for interplanetary travel, space tourism or asteroid mining, it would go against our pragmatic nature (a tad). Space is, alas, the final frontier. So we’re focusing more on enabling what’s possible today.

It’s worth noting that there are so many dApps possible today that this post will not do the peaq network justice, but this article can serve as initial input and inspiration for the first builders of applications for a new machine economy.

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Same same, but better

To understand what dApps can be built on peaq’s Web3 infrastructure today instead of Big Tech’s centralised infrastructure, look no further than the App Store / Play Store. What apps exist which involve machines, vehicles, robots and devices? Bingo. Those are dApps that you can be confident that you can already start to develop on the peaq network.

Just type in ‘taxi’ for example. There are tonnes of taxi apps built on Web2 infrastructure, serving different regions, demographics and offering different kinds of services and revenue models.

It’s time for dApps built on Web3 infrastructure to take over. Apps built by the community, for the community — which respect people’s data, function on a peer-to-peer basis with no unnecessary intermediaries, and allow people and machines to own and control their digital identities.

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Mobility on Land

What machines can do on land is by no means limited to mobility. We foresee a future in which robots will run entire cafes, restaurants and supermarkets, devices look after our health, homes, and harvests, and self-owning machines farm and trade renewable energy.

All of this can be built on peaq, but for now, we’ve streamlined our focus to mobility on land as this is one of the key areas where the machine economy has already taken root, albeit on Web2 infrastructure. It’s also an area with enormous potential for positive impact.

Here are four types of game-changing dApps that can be built for vehicles, such as cars, trucks, scooters and bikes, anywhere in the world;

• Charging
• Sharing
• Parking
• Taxis

peaq provides the Web3 infrastructure for people to develop dApps for machines, vehicles, robots and devices.

You can read more about why it makes sense to build on peaq here.

And check out our open source Modular DePIN Functions for machines, including Self-Sovereign Machine Identity, here.

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Example: Vehicle Sharing

Why build a dApp on peaq’s Web3 infrastructure instead of the status quo, you ask? This step by step example should shed some light on what the next generation of application for machines will look like.

• Alice owns a car and would like to rent it out to Bob as she won’t be using it this weekend. She marks it as available on a Vehicle Sharing dApp built on peaq. Let’s call it W3share.
• Alice doesn’t have to check Bob’s documents because Bob verified himself using his Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI). This means Bob did not have to give his data to a third party / Big Tech firm.
• Bob directly verifies and authenticates himself with Alice’s car as the car also has an SSI. This is made possible thanks to the peaq ID function.
• There’s no key handover. Bob accesses the car via the W3share dApp. This again happens without intermediaries thanks to the peaq access function.
• Bob pays a fee to Alice for using her car when she didn’t need it. Alice doesn’t need to give a large portion of her profit to a Web2/Big Tech firm.
• Neither Alice nor Bob had to give their data up to a Web2/Big Tech firm. Instead, they could choose exactly what data they’d like to sell, to who, for how long.
• A small fee was charged by the W3share dApp. This goes towards improvement and maintenance of the dApp, as determined by the community who built it.
• A small fee is also charged by the peaq network. This goes into an investment pool, is autonomously invested in DeFi, and then distributed to all Machine NFT stakeholders, which can include Alice, Bob, the community and even the car itself.

Everyone’s incentives are aligned. Everyone has a say in how the dApps and machines in their community are run. Quality of service improves while everyone profits. This is the Machine Economy peaq is enabling.

While traditional middlemen, brokers and agencies get squeezed by the rise of the Web3 machine economy, certain people and companies will benefit massively, such as creators and manufacturers. Companies (which may one day choose to become DAOs, or be acquired by DAOs), which create, engineer and manufacture machines are an integral part of the past, current and future machine economy.

The machine economy is already here. Entrepreneurs, builders and developers — it is up to you to decide if we want apps for machines to run on Web2 or Web3 infrastructure.

If you’ve got a burning for a Machine dApp and you’d like to get support and/or funding, or you represent an SME or enterprise which manufacturers machines/hardware, you can now join the peaq ecosystem, here.

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Want to build the Economy of Things?

We’re hiring across the board, from engineering to communications. Join us in building the Economy of Things.

Are you interested in building a dApp for vehicles, robots, devices and other machines? Get inspired, get funded, and start building today.

Want to stay in the loop? Visit our website and join the conversation on our channels.