PEAQ - The Machine Economy, 50 DePIN Projects & Future of PEAQ - Leo Dorlöchter

in this video about Peak we are going to be diving into one of the most exciting layo ones in the web tree ecosystem including an interview with the founder personally I think that this is a breakthrough in decentralization so let's get started in this video we will be integrating an interview with the founder Leo dooer um and I'll be explaining additional content regarding Peak which he has been discussing in the inter view which basically formed a thesis surrounding an investment from our Venture Capital MN Capital so yes we do have a slight bias when it

comes to the ecosystem as we have been doing an investment into the layer one and we have been doing investments into multiple applications within the peak ecosystem and if you think it's interesting to follow make sure to follow the m and capital x account where you can see all the Investments that we have been doing and the updates that we are providing however if we want to ask what Peak is all about let's ask the founder himself what the vision is behind Peak and what it actually does and when this entire Journey has started yeah

so the the journey goes back all the way to 2017 where um the three co-founders Max still and I met in Berlin for the first time and back then it was early ethereum days till introduc uced us to the concept of yeah running decentralized applications and um yeah we we kind of went down a rabbit hole there were lot lots of meetups here and it was also the time where Iota was just starting and Iota had this this vision of of building you know enabling the machine economy and um yeah that really you know captured

our attention and we then looked into the technology and thought about building use cases but but also realized quite quickly that back then l1's L l2s l2s didn't exist yet L l1s weren't really usable too expensive not scalable enough those that said they were scalable enough didn't scale back then and um we then took that and said okay let's let's focus on working with Enterprises to see if there are real problems if there're real yeah problems that can be solved when you apply iot to blockchain and went then on a quite a journey for a

couple of years working with the likes of Audi and the and the Volkswagen group for example on a on a decentralized charging platform because they said hey charging is super fragmented um our users need to sign up with all those different centralized providers and also private charging stations you can't make them available for your neighbors for example to charge it so they actually called us up and said hey we have the idea of solving that with with a blockchain and yeah we jumped on that and and worked on it for two years of course at

the end it's quite clear Enterprise blockchain doesn't make sense I think we all arrived at that point because in the end it's still a centralized consorts here it's still not you know building this neutral infrastructure that's needed but essentially that was the first deepen use case which we started working on in 2019 till 2021 and in 2021 we along the way we realized charging is just one use case there's parking there's uh Robo like car sharing um drones and essentially anything in a smart city um you know fits into the same pattern because if you

if you build those use cases all on web 2 platforms they are closed systems to is one closed platform for one use case and there's no interoperability of the different machines and devices beyond that closed single platform and this is kind of where where it became clear that in order for a machine economy to function right where you have robot taxis where you have sensors where you have users where you have drones whatever you can imagine you need to build that on an open system where they all have a identity and an open system where

they can transact with each other and where those different use cases like parking or charging are business logic in terms of a decentralized application or now called a deepend that runs on chain and essentially those different machines and devices can compose themselves between the different applications and freely transact on an open system and that's kind of where the vision of peak came from which we started building in 2021 and and yeah one and a half years into building Peak the term deepen emerged which was amazing cuz we've been building a layer one for deepen all

that time and that really helped us then to you know I mean projects were finding us we were finding projects and that's how we buildt an ecosystem of 50 Deens building on Peak um prior to launch um yeah because we've done that all all the time all along and we have that much bigger vision and long-term vision and not just their to capture a certain narrative I think uh Peak has a very unique strategy uh where it's it came from Web Two instead of web 3 so there is we'll talk about that in a little

bit but there's an Enterprise interest and you build a solution for that instead of the other way around and that is why I think Peak is unique but for people that are unfamiliar yet yet with what Peak is in a few sentences how would you describe Peak yeah so at the core what we're building is we call it the backbone of the machine economy so that's a bit more of an abstract um sentence but more granular Peak is a layer one blockchain for deepens and providing all functionality and tooling that deepens need to be built

quickly but also providing uh defi Primitives that are focused on machines and devices so it's really about building that that layer one computer essentially which has all those standardized functionalities and tooling for deepens to build faster and more efficient and then also um the financial D5 Primitives which allow for the financial interactions of machines and and deepens and yeah that is peak and a nutshell and multiple deepens together in our view create the machine economy we've just heard Leo discuss everything surrounding deepin and the origin of deepin comes from iot and the origin of iot

comes from the machine economy and the Machine economy is basically just a new version of economy in itself we have the financial economy as we can see on the screen it is basically just a progress in a technological world where we are having advancements of machines being able to connect and being able to talk to each other and being able to understand value and to exchange that value and you might also understand that having the machine economy where we can utilize machines can also be an ideal ingredient for advanced AI agents in the future where

they are going to be scripting and doing Advanced tasks between each other so we had the machine economy and the vision of the machine economy which is intertwined with iot AI and blockchain and that after a few years basically made the entire thesis surrounding deepin which is the centralized physical infrastructure Network and that's the entire name of the vertical which has two different categories which is Hardware based and software based and Hardware based is basically having a physical product that you need to buy which is usually a note or um anything comparable to that in

the case of Akash for instance you need to buy a note which can make you money or gives you access to certain parts of the ecosystem in the case of helium you need to buy a certain wireless router instead of a note but it's a comparable example in the sense of having a software example then you're looking at adding an application toward watch your mobile phone or toward your computer where in the case of silencio you are measuring noise surrounding the places where you can come and earn a certain reward for that or you can

use a camera like with natics where you map out the entire world um with certain applications Within dpin so this basically opens up a whole new market where you can utilize value value that you have been making but didn't get any reward for we all have a mobile phone that has additional space to uh utilize the actual power of that device which is the same for a mobile phone which is the same for just moving around so that's why I I think in essence DPN is super interesting and that's why I asked Leo why is

deep in so interesting and why would people want to choose Peak as their Leo want to build on the the really interesting part of deepen is that we can actually create value and a value proposition that wasn't possible without a blockchain or without web 3 so here comes a vertical in the space that creates completely new business models and completely new new um goods and services that are not possible without cuz that has been always a question why do you need a blockchain right why do you um is it just there to speculate which a

lot of people outside of the space still say and think that there's actual no real utility but deepen is changing that because you can for the first time incentivize individuals and also companies to build out physical infrastructure and giving concrete example you know sensor networks I think is is a beautiful example that when you the when you drive through um or when you try to collect data in terms of what is happening in a city at at any time in a in a certain location if you do it in a centralized way that's almost impossible

the amount of cameras you need to install everywhere globally to exactly know what's happening in a smart City at a certain point in time you cannot orchestrate that in a centralized way but if you incentivize anyone driving through a city with a smartphone like nxs is doing for example and you just put it in your car and it it records um if there's an accident or if there's a traffic jam or if there's something happening in that City and you know in a in a data compliant way can can feed that into the system this

is this is creating the basis for yeah having the real time digit having the real world digitized in real time and that's something just impossible to capture web 2 and I think the moment um and the moment I realized or we realized back then also with the charging infrastructure when you incentivize individuals to connect their private charging stations to an open system the amount of charging stations you can make available scales crazily CU there are many more private charging stations than public charging stations and people can yeah can earn from from charging sessions happening and

we can just scale infrastructure much much faster than it would be possible in a centralized way so it's a it's a big innovation in capital formation as well because it's not one entity that pays for all the infr structure but the costs are split equally between everyone participating and then also the rewards are split between everyone creating value on the network so it's a it's a yeah it's a business model Revolution only possible with a blockchain and token incentives the peak ecosystem rather than a high trut Leo one Solana or any of the other layer

ones out there I mean first of all Peak is also a high throughput L1 and it's it's scaling like in the next couple of months um it's a bold statement but we will outperform many high throughput l1s uh significantly so that's that's in the making because of course scale and low cost is an a fundamental requirement um for deepens and machine economy the machine economy to scale at the same time then having additional functionality such as machine identities Access Control data verification payment and so on and so on things that every deer needs but that

other chains don't have available out of the box so the stack and the developer experience we're building is just continuously improved and optimized for deep ends and there's there's a lot in the works there as well so if you build a deep end at some point on PE of course it's a work in progress but at some point it's going to be super super easy to build on chain and have all the functionality with a few lines of code integrated in your app and part of that is already there today then additionally um the the

defi ecosystem that's emerging more and more on Peak so it's still early the the first Primitives will be deployed quite soon but those are also focused and optimized on okay what do deepens need and also what for example do tokenized machines need like can can there be new boring and Landing protocols where tokenized machines are collateral so like really creating also the the ecosystem Beyond um yeah Beyond traditional D5 Primitives and thinking about okay what what do deepens need what does the machine economy need and Builders see that we're working and planning not just on

having capturing short-term momentum on a specific narrative but that we're working long term on doing one thing after the other and doing the right things right and they see themselves growing in that ecosystem and on that journey and the vision and of course I think one reason which is much less tangible but it's it's culture and values a lot of the deepen Founders are quite impact driven they're quite serious in in what they want to do and what they want to build and and less focused on just you know creating thing that creates a lot

of hype quickly where they can exit quickly on the market because I would argue that majority of the founders in the space are more focused on on making money quickly and less are focused on on having a a long-term impact and there's nothing wrong with making money of course however on the on and what we see in the in the deepen space is that there are more and more Founders that not only care about making money but that also care about um building something meaningful and creating value and that's the the culture in the peak

ecosystem forming and that's attracting a lot of like-minded Founders and then things like the brand of course matters a lot of Enterprises engage with Peak and we make introductions to the deepens and there are a few things coming out the next weeks where big big Global brands are doing something with the deepen on Peak and it's going to be announced and shared publicly so they also see how we can help them with the demand side because the Enterprises want to engage with Peak as the brand and the positioning um yeah they like that a lot

yeah as Leo explained providing an ecosystem that basically protects you against all the uncertainties of the web Tre ecosystem is something we need as there are so many great Founders that list and build a protocol but are getting screwed over by Mal ious actors in the terms of of FY capitals KS or whatever body there is so if you build an ecoystem that provides funding through peak in this essence or provides legal um advisory services or provides um the ability to get listed or provides everything you need as a network to flourish as a protocol

I think that's something that the entire ecosystem basically needs and that's what I think many protocols need and that's why also most of the layer ones are pivoting towards a specific use case we all know the peak right now which is a deep in layer one we also see specific AI layer ones in the sense of near we've seen an awa layer one in the sense of um Avalanche so those are all starting to exist which at some point are going to be connected with each other now the entire ecosystem is significantly growing I've got

a picture on the screen which is the community is currently more than 500,000 people more than 4 and a half million in machines are connected to the peak ecosystem we have more than 2.6 billion in total machine value connected with Peak and we have a month-to-month increase of 50% in terms of peos system machines being added which is a massive growth taking place um utilizing the ability to quickly expand with all the value that's being created that especially in certain regions of the world is going to generate a lot of additional value into people's their

lives so it's expanding and as Leo has been T has been telling us at the beginning he has been building this for multiple years and doing that he created an ecosyst system of more than 50 deepins in December there were 46 um and that ecosystem is me pretty big in a sense that we have wallets being integrated we have Integrations with other protocols out there that are not deep in we have got the apps themselves so we have natics which we've also invested in we've got multiple other projects that we have not been investing in

in our currently life like for instance cencio and there are some more interesting aspects of the entire Peak ecosystem which you can see on the bottom left and the top right which is on the bottom left we have all the Enterprises in the web 2 ecosystem that have been plucked into the peak ecosystem for instance Airbus Bosch and on the top right we see machines that are connected which is again Bosch but also Sony and also multiple other companies so that's why I wanted to ask him on the fact that there are so many web

2 Protocols of web two companies connected with Peak and that is a big step forward into adoption which has been a hurdle for most of crypto but how was it possible for Peak to actually being able to connect with the web two companies and get them on board how did you manage to get them in and what are they looking for to get out of a collaboration with Peak yeah so it's it's been a long journey and definitely our U time before we build Peak the way we know it today has helped a lot because

we've built a lot of those relationships prior to 2021 already so we made ourself a name in the in the space as working also on iot Enterprise Solutions and we could pull quite some of those relationships into our current role and at the same time um yeah using our warm network of advisers and investors to get those introductions and being really able to show look there is real new value that's being created here with those deepens which is might be interesting for you in terms of consuming that value or co-creating that value in creating new

business models which you know with the deepen together so we basically said hey guys um we take you on that Journey with us we make all the introductions that that are interesting to you um and it's like a matchmaking process and we make sure you don't get disrupted by this completely at least you're aware of what's happening and we we bring you the the the things that we think is are interesting for you and um yeah this is how we we got many of them on board that said yeah that makes sense finally something in

the in the space that actually makes complete sense and and and it's legit and um yes please please take us on that Journey journey and you know help us get exposure to that to that space emerging the origin of peak is German based so it's European and that's why I wanted to to use this picture where it shows so many web two companies that are currently connected with the peak ecosystem I just discussed Bosch Airbus but also T-Mobile Lu Hansa Continental um Audi MasterCard and way more relatively smaller companies have been connected with the peak

ecosystem and as Leo has been describing they are getting value out of the use case of web tree which is super positive now in order to make that work we need to have a um ecosystem where also the retail investor can actually be able to get value from Peak so as Peak has been recently launching I asked Leo what the key milestones are for Peak for 2025 and what the campaign is all about that has recently been launched on the 5th of February absolutely yeah so the name of the campaign is get real and we

started working on that one year ago already we thought okay what can we do as a campaign to really help the peak ecosystem go from zero to one and to like bootstrap the initial growth and we analyze different comp aigns I mean there were growth campaigns where you you provide liquidity and and do other things but all of them felt like not providing sustainable value because if you just go somewhere at liquidity you get an airdrop and you move your liquidity somewhere else to get the next air drop that's not really bringing lasting value to

the network so we thought about how do we set it up that it helps our Deens and also Peak and the campaign essentially it's a cast user interface on get real. peak. network where when you sign up you first get a Pon not you can choose one of fe uh of four characters which were developed in collaboration with Cotto the agency that recently redesigned the Call of Duty characters so they're like um four base characters that anyone can choose and as you go through the campaign that character develops further and further and further so there's

a big gamification ECT of it and then you have a lot of tasks that you can fulfill quests and those quests are actually you becoming an active member in all the different deepens on the peak ecosystem you sign up there and the more values you create for the deepens the more points you get on the leaderboard and you can rank higher and higher uh there are also of course Quests for for defi like providing liquidity adding liquidity but that's a separate leaderboard because we want to make sure that the the hardcore deepen users are not

just easily overtaken by a few whales you know getting higher so they're different leaderboards for different categories K's also have a leader board and also that is slightly separate because we really want to make sure that the average person which doesn't have a lot of liquidity or doesn't have a lot of reach also has a strong Chance by working hard in the campaign of ranking well so the campaign is all about growing deepens on Peak and by growing deepens on Peak we grow the onchain activity of peak because every action they are doing is onchain

activity so it's a absolute win-win for the deepens and for Peak and also has the the long-term go goal since the campaign goes for one year and the bet is basically if someone has done that for a whole year the likelihood that they will just continue is very high because they get the deepen rewards they are really deep in the community they have built their picon not to to a high high level and that's basically a a growth engine we've built for the entire ecosystem and the chain because we're of course aware that Crossing you

know from a new L1 to an established L1 is is is a difficult path to go through and that's a that's a key part of the strategy of you know getting there and really being one of the the most active chains out there in terms of users in terms of activity yeah so with with get real having started yesterday that definitely has been a big key Milestone um getting that year-long growth campaign for the entire ecosystem going um Additionally the the defi ecosystem or machine defi ecosystem as we call it like really getting the right

Primitives on chain and starting to build an defa ecosystem which is different and that's that's in motion already so that's another big big thing that is happening this year um we're also going to set up key strategic locations where we have big demo spaces working together with governments so really aligning on you know having Smart City demo spaces showcasing all the things that are possible and also making sure that we're working with the the governments that support uh new regulations uh which for for example are needed in the machine economy like Frameworks for machine tokenization

that anyone can invest into so those things are all in the works and in the making and then of course um on the capital side right like there there's a lot going on in terms of the the making the treasury bigger and bigger attracting more and more um Lighthouse deepens building on Peak and really um yeah getting closer to the point of um having the the initial stack of the machine economy in place where there's the chain level super high performance and throughput there are actually um updates coming in the next month where we will

prove to the world and show to the world how we have extreme High TPS in production with super high decentralization um right like those things then on the tooling tooling and infro level having everything in place that's that's needed um and what I said before the D5 Primitives that are focused on the machine economy so by the end of the year since I'm also a lead the the product side of things I want to be at a point where I'm like yes that's a that's a h holistic beautiful thing and you know everything is there

that that projects need um on on all layers of the state because there there many layers um yeah I think that this campaign is super super interesting and um in that sense it's a campaign that lasts for a year so if you provide value for the entire year you'll be rewarded and you'll be ranked higher in the leaderboard um for more information you can find the campaign in the description there's a link that you can click on you can get your own avatar and you can create value for yourself which is I think a super

cool addition to add and it's going to provide a chain reaction across the ecosystem because all the deepins will be connected to the campaign resulting into a network effect that expands Peak so getting into a conclusion about peak in itself and I think that this provides a lot of background information on what Peak is um I think Leo has been explaining it fairly well of what Peak is doing and why it's so interesting and I think that there is a that Peak is a strong fundamental layer with ages of experience of building this up and

from my experience they are only building and doing something after they have been testing it multiple times checking it seeing whether it fits with the vision um that therefore I think that the ecosystem is going to expand over the next few years it's going to be a long-term play you need to have a horizon for this and it's a new emerging ecosystem um that's going to be built up it's technically just AWA and defi integrated with each other um with weip two partners and that's why I think it's a must components in this market they

provide additional value for people their lives through utilizing spare space into uh machines that everybody has so it's just generating more value for people their lives through deepins uh which I think in itself is a movement and I think it's also super fun and um I think that I've been in a space for eight years now that and concept like Peak basically brings me back to when I started in crypto and I think that therefore this is a breakthrough for the market in itself where does it go to I think we have barely started with

Peak and its ecosystem there's only one deep in listed after uh the chain itself went live and if you start comparing the layer ones with each other then the valuation of peak is relatively low um it's currently around 1 and a half billion fdv circulating its less between 200 to 250 million as a comparison Avalanche is currently live for multiple years has a valuation of 20 billion fdv at the current market circumstances so yes there's a lot of upside to come but I think there's a lot of value to be created with people for people

their lives as well and I think that's the most important part and that's why M and capital has invested into Peak I hope you have been enjoying this update about Peak which is different than my usual updates let me know in the comments beneath if you have enjoyed this one which project should we be having next let it know and also make sure to subscribe I'll See You Again ciao