What’s happening?

krest, peaq’s canary network and the world’s first layer-1 for simulating the Economy of Things, is now live and producing blocks as a parachain on Kusama.

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Why does it matter?

Besides being a grand rehearsal for peaq mainnet’s launch on Polkadot, krest’s takeoff on Kusama grants the builders working on dApps and DePINs on peaq, including NATIX, bloXmove, and more, a risk-free live production-grade network running as part of the DotSama ecosystem for testing their projects. You know the motto, on krest we test.

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What does it mean for the community?

krest’s launch is a crucial precursor for the launch of the $KREST token, with a whole lot of community airdrops and reward initiatives slated for the coming months.

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Just about six months ago, we announced krest, peaq’s canary network and the world’s first layer-1 hub for simulating projects in the Economy of Things. Now, after tons of hard work, a full bakery’s worth of raspberry pie jokes (some were almost funny), and a sweeping win at Kusama’s parachain auction #72, we have some good news.

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The krest blockchain is live and connected to Kusama.

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New to the community? This one’s for you. 

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To all our new community members - welcome! Let’s explain some words you may not be familiar with — parachain, Kusama, this kind of stuff. If you’re one of the more established peaqonauts and don’t need such explainers, feel free to jump to the next section. Everyone else, take notes, this stuff will be on the exams.

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A layer-1 blockchain like Ethereum or peaq is called this way because it provides a foundational layer for all the other projects running on it, from decentralized applications and decentralized infrastructure networks (DePINs) to rollups and various other services. In the Polkadot ecosystem, there’s also Polkadot (duh) as the layer-0 network that enables layer-1s, which are usually isolated from one another, to have native interoperability. When linked with this hub chain, known as relay chain, these layer-1s leave the ranks of standalone networks and become parachains, or chains running in parallel to the relay.

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Kusama is Polkadot’s canary chain, a production-grade network for daring experiments with a motto to fit: “Expect chaos”. It features the same architecture, with a relay chain and parachains linked to it. After winning its 72nd slot auction, krest, peaq’s own fiery, bold, and chaotic sister, is now one of them.

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EoT simulation, here we come

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You can already keep your finger on krest’s pulse here; through this explorer, you can review the latest blocks, look through the latest on-chain events, take a look at the connected nodes, and more. As of today, there are thousands of machines connected to it such as Raspberry Pis and more. Soon, the owners of these devices will start earning tokens as part of krest’s machine rewards mechanism, so stay tuned for more.

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Another major milestone coming up in the next few weeks is the listing of the $KREST token. The token already exists in the blockchain but is not yet treatable; its first public listing would be considered the actual token generation event (TGE). You can look forward to all of the airdrops, including that for the crowdloan contributors, and rewards that will follow the TGE, as there’s quite a hefty amount earmarked for various community-facing initiatives. We’ll share more details later, so make sure to follow us on socials and join our Discord.

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In the meantime, the founders and developers building on peaq will move ahead with their projects and integrations, which will first come to krest before launching on peaq’s mainnet, which is now in its crowdloan stage. Some of the projects coming to krest or leveraging some of its functions will include:

  • Menthol Protocol’s carbon offsets calculator and mechanism,
  • DappLooker’s dashboard for krest,
  • peaq SDK will soon enable developers to connect with krest in a few lines of code,
  • peaq portal will soon enable you to manage your tokens on krest through its interface,
  • NATIX may leverage krest for outfitting the thousands of cameras making up its DePIN with peaq IDs,
  • Fraunhofer HHI may tap krest as a testing ground for its AI project for making electric vehicles more sustainable,
  • The founders we’re co-training as part of the joint educational program with EWOR will leverage krest for testing their DePIN projects,
  • Wicrypt will connect its decentralized hotspot network of 1,100+ devices to krest, 
  • bloXmove may leverage krest to test future updates and integrations for its Web3 ride-hailing service in Nigeria, now already live.

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There’s quite a lot of stuff to be looking forward to, and even more things will come up with the next few announcements. If anything, the entire stretch until July is nothing but very, very hard work and excitement, so get ready to be caught unprepared… And, of course, expect chaos — a very peaqturesque one. 

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Join the Economy of Things

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