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

peaq has introduced Network-Level Incentive Pools as a foundational element of its blockchain architecture, designed to accelerate the growth of the Machine Economy. These pools are not app-level features but protocol-native compartments that accumulate tokens from network fees, block rewards, and contributions from applications building on peaq. For example, MachineX, a decentralized exchange for the Machine Economy, directs 1% of its swap fees into the pools. By embedding this mechanism at the deepest level of the protocol, peaq ensures that every interaction on the network contributes to a shared reservoir of liquidity, which can then be redeployed to strengthen adoption, security, and community participation.

Key Ideas

The pools are divided into distinct categories, each serving a specific purpose:

General Pool - Funds high-impact projects such as Machine DeFi, RWAs, and community campaigns.
Security Pool - Supports initiatives like bug bounties to keep the network reliable.
Machine Onboarding Pool - Subsidizes onboarding of new machines, with future community voting planned.
Machine Incentive Pool - Rewards high-performing machines with transaction subsidies and additional incentives.
Human-Centric Pool - Redistributes part of machine usage proceeds to improve human wellbeing in the age of automation.

Governance of these pools follows a phased timeline: initially protocol-owned, then managed by a committee of six wallets under the peaq Foundation, gradually opening to community participation, and ultimately evolving into full on-chain governance where PEAQ token holders control proposals and liquidity deployment.

Why It Matters?

The Network-Level Incentive Pools act as a self-reinforcing growth engine for peaq's ecosystem. By channeling fees and rewards into targeted pools, the system creates a flywheel effect: more machines and people join, generating more activity and fees, which in turn produce more liquidity that is redeployed to onboard new machines, incentivize trusted ones, and fund community-facing initiatives. This cycle compounds adoption and value creation, positioning peaq as a uniquely self-sustaining infrastructure for the Machine Economy.