peaq’s Network-Level Incentive Pools | Council, Pools, and Transparency

The Machine Economy is coming together. Just one year since launch, peaq is already powering the world’s first tokenized robo-farm and is home to 6+ million machine and human addresses. The ecosystem is maturing, and its continuous scaling will require savvy allocation of resources. 

That is where peaq’s Network-Level Incentive Pools come in. Network-Level Incentive Pools are modular, purpose-defined token economic compartments within the peaq ecosystem. Or, in simpler terms, these are pools implemented on a level as deep as it gets (baked into the peaq blockchain architecture, not a single app on peaq) that accumulate tokens allocated towards specific pools. These tokens come from the fees of pretty much any activity on the peaq blockchain. Access to these pools requires a solid governance protocol in place and a transparent reporting mechanism, and in this blog, we’ll break all that down for you.

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How peaq’s Network-Level Incentive Pools work

Like with most other layer-1 blockchains, a part of peaq’s network fees go to validators and their delegators, the people who keep peaq decentralized, secure, and censorship-resistant. We won’t dwell on this here — check out the dedicated blog on staking to learn more and start earning. What matters and sets peaq apart as a layer-1 specifically built to power the Machine Economy is that another part of the fees is distributed between the Network-Level Incentive Pools: Whenever someone interacts with peaq, these pools get a small amount of tokens. 

The accumulation isn’t limited to the network fees and block rewards. As mentioned in some of the earlier blogs, peaq’s unique incentive flywheel mechanism is also supported by some of the apps building on peaq, which allocate a fraction of their own fees towards the pools as well. The rationale behind this, besides the shared vision of a growing and successful Machine Economy, is that the apps themselves stand to benefit from the pools and the growth they bring about. As an example, MachineX, the world’s first decentralized exchange for the Machine Economy, funnels 1.00% of its swap fees towards the Network-Level Incentive Pools.  

The Network-Level Incentive Pools went live with peaq and have been collecting liquidity since peaq’s genesis. As the projects builds up the momentum, they are about to get more active, delivering liquidity where it can make the most impact. So now, let’s introduce them properly — but bear in mind that things may somewhat change in the future, as some of the concepts are still in testing:

General 

The General pool serves the immediate needs of Machine Economy growth and adoption, deploying liquidity towards the most high-impact projects and initiatives. Its first intended use includes bootstrapping Machine DeFi and Machine RWAs as well as providing liquidity to community-facing campaigns.

Security

The Security pool provides liquidity for various initiatives keeping peaq secure and reliable, including bug bounty campaigns and more.

Machine Onboarding

The Machine Onboarding pool supports the continuous onboarding of new machines to the Machine Economy on peaq. With the future updates, PEAQ holders will be able to participate in the process, voting for the machines that will receive onboarding subsidies.

Machine Incentive 

The Machine Incentive pool is earmarked for transaction subsidies and, potentially, additional rewards for onchain machines demonstrating high performance and high trust from the community and users. 

Human-Centric 

The Human-Centric pool provides liquidity for initiatives meant to improve human wellbeing in the Age of Automation by redistributing a part of the proceeds from the machine usage on peaq to the community.

As you can see, the pools are designed to power a growth flywheel where:

→ More machines and people join peaq

→ More machines and people means more onchain activity and users for apps on peaq

→ More activity and users means more fees 

→ More fees means more liquidity for the Protocol Pools

Rinse and repeat until the whole world is decentralized, community-owned, and, for once, functional.

Now that we’ve introduced the Protocol Pools and their purpose, let’s dive into another important aspect: Their governance timeline and transparency protocol.

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Pool Governance Timeline & Transparency Reporting

As we’ve established in the previous section, the Network-Level Incentive Pools are a big deal — they are the economic stimulation hyperdrive that works as an unfair advantage for literally any real-world app on peaq, helping to onboard new machines, reward the machines making the most impact, and drive overall adoption. For this reason, the management of these pools is a serious affair that must be rolled out step-by-step, ensuring the entire network works like a well-oiled machine. This phased rollout matches how the system actually evolves in practice: from safe, controlled operation to full community-driven governance.

Here is what this timeline looks like:

1. Network-Level Incentive Pools established and running. At this point, the pools are up and running since the TGE, accruing tokens from the appropriate fees. They are protocol-owned, closed for any third-party interference, all to the point where nobody can actually govern them. This era began with peaq’s genesis in November 2024, and wraps up now as the pools are activated to bootstrap the network and the ecosystem.
   
   
2. Committee on-chain governance — begins with this announcement. Here, a protocol committee will be operating the pools via onchain governance, proposing and executing changes within strict, transparent parameters. During this era, the pools will be managed by the peaq Foundation; executing this will be a council of six trusted wallets. For security reasons, the identity of their holders will need to be kept secret — after all, a known person is a point of failure, that's why Satoshi is still anon — but their addresses are listed below:
   
   • 5GD9hpcUCzdMAQA2KU3F1EKocfU6BzqX6qnSTqajL2p3YZKv
   • 5CdHW4RHHUrrnLzRzceQmYeqyDQXv8sk8F7nPuS6EcvcNd59
   • 5EZzBYUongVQShYbyutZsrEY2BaWkNwmo9EcsKZ5RWBgfW4m
   • 5F5DA3m8hVn6SrxpzegeSVT94T5i6siwsu78uidpBAHq4xSz
   • 5FfXW7B3j4Av7YY75nJ1a3fk6LCC5znLzDsVgsK8mPPHWHnR
   • 5CnxuZEBGQ4K8kaWqVVLRbEGafVgq6GFj1vpb6rjKjeF9BSH
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     Together, the council will be handling the Network-Level Incentive Pools on behalf of the Foundation, with no tokens transferred without a majority decision. As the pools get activated, they will supervise the process and make sure that the tokens are not misappropriated or otherwise misused. They will act as the governing body for now, with community governance as the end goal.
     

3. Community committee inclusion. In the next era, committee participation will be gradually opened to the community. PEAQ token holders will begin to play an increasingly active role in reviewing pool liquidity deployment decisions, voting on the initiatives to support, and guiding the liquidity deployments,
   
   
4. Full-scale on-chain governance. The endgame for peaq. This is where the management of the Network-Level Incentive Pools becomes fully decentralized, and PEAQ token holders control the proposals, voting, and parameter changes for Protocol Pools directly onchain.

As part of our overall commitment to transparency and accountability, we will document all movements. The early version of the Transparency Page is available here. There, you will find spreadsheets detailing transactions for every Network-Level Incentive Pool, including the date, the purpose, and the recipient wallet. Over time, the Transparency Page will be integrated into the core structure of the official project website, open for the community to review at any time.

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