May 17, 2024

krest | What’s next for peaq’s canary network and token?

peaq

Community

In a nutshell: krest will continue to play its important role as a live, production-grade environment for peaq and its DePINs, but it will do so in a bigger and far more exciting way.

krest has always been the testing and simulation network for peaq. If peaq is the home of DePIN, krest is the testing grounds for both the foundations (peaq) and the applications that run on it – because when working with real-world applications, you can never be too careful.

So krest is a place for builders to experiment in a live public blockchain environment without running the risk of causing any real-world harm, but what does the future hold for krest with the launch of peaq’s mainnet?

To the people who built krest and are building peaq the answer is straightforward – nothing. krest is not some interim blockchain to fill the gap before peaq launches. krest was always designed to live side by side with peaq. But the question gives us the opportunity to dive into where krest is heading, so that’s exactly what we’ll do.

On krest, we test

It can be hard to believe that something you’ve worked on for so long is about to come to fruition. Still, the fact persists: peaq mainnet is about to go live. Its launch is exciting for many reasons (how often do you get to take part in a revolution?), and one of them is that krest is about to level up. The production-grade network for testing DePINs will soon turn into one of the crucial pillars of the reputation system on peaq, for people, machines, and DePINs alike.

On krest, we test, an ancient proverb goes, and its wisdom will continue to apply when the peaq mainnet launches. After all, testing is an important part of the development process, especially when it comes to real-world applications with potential to do real-world harm. To incentivize people and projects to take this important step, the following reward programs will go on offer as part of the upcoming reputation system on peaq:

“Tested on krest” status for DePINs
Fungible and non-fungible token rewards for the community

How exactly will that work? Well, soon enough, DePINs building on peaq will be able to launch test on krest campaigns. The campaigns will be incentivized as part of the Ecosystem Grant Program by the Peaq Foundation and will require the project to stake a certain amount of $KREST. Some of these tokens will be used to reward the people joining the campaign as testers and connecting their devices with krest.

To join in, you would have to either hold a certain amount of $KREST tokens or to stake them as well. Besides the rewards from the staked pool, you may also get rewards in projects’ native token or stablecoins, depending on the DePIN’s discretion.

On top of that, you will also receive a unique tester’s NFT that will be valid across the entire peaqosystem. You will be able to link this NFT with any device you connect to a DePIN to boost your reputation and provide the community with extra proof of your and the device’s credibility. The NFTs may also be eligible for token airdrops — again, depending on the DePIN’s discretion.

A DePIN that successfully completes a Testing campaign on krest will receive the special “Tested on krest” status when launching on the peaq mainnet. The status will boost its standing in peaq’s reputation system. In more specific terms, it will be one of the variables defining the rewards the DePIN will receive when staking the $PEAQ token, enabling them to boost their yield.

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A testing ground for the new world

As exciting as DePIN testing campaigns are, working as a tool to sustain krest’s long-term growth and development, there will be something even bigger happening on the network. krest is meant as a proving ground for ideas, a network where we come to semi-intentionally break things, put them back together, and break them again until they work.

This applies not just to DePINs building on peaq, but very much to peaq itself. As we said when peaq was first unveiled, if you want to see what’s coming to peaq, check out what’s being deployed on krest — much like Kusama and Polkadot.

There will also be penetration testing and security campaigns following a similar approach to that detailed above. Since much of what is launched on peaq is tested on krest first, peaq is in the rare but fortunate position of being able to have its canary network attacked first, while live.

On this note; this has already happened. Malicious actors have attacked the krest network and allowed us to learn and make upgrades ahead of the peaq network launch. So krest has very much already served its purpose on that front, and will continue to in the months ahead.

So to those malicious actors, thank you.

krest is the perfect space for the team behind peaq to launch socio-economic experiments on ownership, value distribution, and other core concepts of the Economy of Things before taking them to peaq. The place where this economy goes through its earliest and, potentially, faultiest stages, before emerging as the next big global paradigm.

The first concept to be tried on krest will present an alternative to the much-hyped (and much-derided, too) Universal Basic Income. On its face, the idea of giving people a lifeline in a time when more and more jobs fall prey to automation and AI is actually pretty handy. The problem is, though, that the hand that feeds also holds the leash. When issued by a centralized authority, be it a government, a company, or an international organization, the system inevitably invites corruption and abuse.

On krest, an alternative concept will be put to a test. While more details will come to light in due time, for now, the two key things to say are that this concept will not be controlled by a centralized entity, instead leveraging Web3, and will be rooted in sustainable, real-world economic processes. The idea is to make everyone a stakeholder in the process of the great transformation, not a victim or a serf.

So there you have it — exciting things are coming to krest. From community-driven incentivized testing campaigns to ambitious experiments, the network will be home to all sorts of engaging initiatives and projects – and this will continue long into the future. So strap in and join the wild ride, because this rocketship is going places!

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