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In a nutshell: In 2023, everyone should have equal access to the Web — and Wicrypt is joining the peaq ecosystem to close the infamous digital divide. Communities around the world will be able to subsidize Wicrypt hotspots enabling users to share their connection with others through peaq’s Machine DeFi mechanisms. With peaq’s machine rewards, they will be earning extra tokens for connecting the unconnected.
It’s nice to go offline every now and then, eh? Read a newspaper instead of browsing news feeds, have lunch with friends instead of another Discord get-together, and read a book without touching your phone even once. A digital detox is good for you, seriously, give it a shot some time. Although being able to do so is a bit of a privilege in our connected times, right? Well, in some parts of the world, it might be, but in others, going online is the actual outlier.
Just imagine: In this day and age, about three billion people don’t have Internet access.
A pretty startling figure, right? That’s about one-third of the global population, mostly coming from underprivileged groups and communities, cut away from one of the most important technologies of the past centuries. All the knowledge of the world, all the digital tools you can imagine, all the remote gigs and other economic opportunities — all of this is swinging just past the people that have the least, and stand the most to gain from it.
Wicrypt Network, a decentralized mobile internet sharing and monetization network, works to make sure that the digital divide closes for good — and it’s chosen peaq as its digital backbone. As part of the integration, Wicrypt will bring its network of more than 1,000 hotspots to to krest, peaq’s canary network launching soon, 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.
“Web access is a must for any service leveraging connected devices, which makes it one of the crucial pillars for the Economy of Things. 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.”
- Till Wendler, co-founder of peaq
Wicrypt Network enables 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 make use of 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 the purchases of hardware 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, peaq’s canary network, once it goes live on Kusama in Q2 2023 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 expand there as well. Wicrypt users will also be able to leverage peaq’s machine subsidization pools to crowdsource the purchases of hardware via borderless on-chain mechanisms.
“The digital divide is a real scourge for underprivileged communities as it denies them the tools that could help them thrive. 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.”
- Ugochukwu Aronu, CEO of Wicrypt Network
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.
About Wicrypt Network
Wicrypt is a decentralised internet access network that empowers users to share data with their guests, customers or community at whatever rates they decide.
Licensed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Wicrypt is one of the 2019 NCC Tech Innovator winners, with a $5,500 grant. They have also raised $1,500,000 in financing from AU21 Capital Investors and recently won a $150,000 grant at the LEAP23 event in Saudi Arabia. With over 1,100 devices across 30 countries and 100 cities globally, Wicrypt aims to decentralize the internet and ensure affordable internet access for people worldwide.
For more information, visit Wicrypt, join our Discord, or follow us on Twitter.
