Builder Updates
What’s happening?
peaq’s capabilities to accommodate Ethereum developers have expanded, with the first update delivering peaq IDs to peaq’s EVM side.
Why is it important?
EVM is so popular among Web3 builders that it has become the de facto industry standard. As versatile and functional as other VMs are, EVM has by far the largest adoptionl. The new update makes it easier for EVM-native projects to safely migrate to peaq without having to overhaul their stack.
What does this mean for the community?
The easier it is for EVM-native projects to leverage peaq’s Modular DePIN Functions, the more DePINs you’re likely to see choosing to build on peaq, bringing more devices, activity, and value into the peaqosystem. Whether migrating or building from scratch, EVM compatibility for peaq’s DePIN functions enables builders to develop and deploy faster.
Imagine two construction projects working side by side. On the first site, things are moving forward full-on as workers bring in entire pre-made blocks that are magically converted into full-fledged apartments within minutes. On the other side… Oh well. It’s not that there’s nothing happening, but these cool blocks — they were meant to work with a different architecture and piping, and to install each, you basically have to rebuild it from scratch.
Building a decentralized application (dApp) or a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) on peaq is akin to the site #1 experience thanks to all of peaq’s Modular DePIN Functions. You can tap peaq ID for all your multi-chain self-sovereign ID needs, leverage peaq pay to handle peer-to-peer payments, and use peaq access to manage complex role-based access rules and protocols.
All of these functions are readily available to all builders in the peaqosystem. However, those building their dApp or DePIN on peaq’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) side weren’t able to access them while staying within the familiar confines of an Ethereum-based environment.
But lo and behold! peaq’s core functions are coming to the EVM side of its chain, and peaq ID is the first one to do so. How? Why? Let’s dig in.
Link to Documentation of peaq ID for EVM
Those who have been around for a while know that despite being built using Substrate and thereby natively supporting WebAssembly (WASM) smart contracts written in Rust, peaq also natively supports the Ethereum Virtual Machine. In other words, it can run smart contracts in Solidity, the programming language for the Ethereum ecosystem, by far the largest in terms of the developer community.
The idea is to enable Ethereum teams working on real-world dApps and DePINs to smoothly transition to peaq as a layer-1 specifically built to accommodate such apps through its core functions and economics. It also enables new projects to choose EVM as their preferred tech stack.
There is a catch, though. All of peaq’s machine-oriented functions that are meant to make life easier for DePINs — the pre-packaged, pre-made building blocks you can deploy with a few lines of code — were initially built using WASM in Rust. So as an EVM developer coming to peaq, you’d still have to get a grasp of WASM and Rust if you want to actually leverage those.
With the new update, peaq’s Modular DePIN Functions are coming to its EVM side. peaq ID is the first one to go live on the EVM side, and it’s already live on krest, peaq’s sister network.
The peaqosystem has been growing lately, with 2blox migrating to peaq from Algorand, an EVM-compatible chain, and bloXmove originally building on Polygon, an Ethereum layer-2. This should already give you a good idea of how wildly popular EVM and Solidity are in the Web3 space, and how important it is to make peaq as accessible for Ethereum builders as possible.
Full EVM compatibility for peaq’s core functions will make life easier for EVM builders, enabling them to develop and deploy lightning-fast. That means even more projects coming along for the ride, and with them, more devices, transactions, and overall network activity. If that’s not worth celebrating, we don’t know what is.
