Fundamentals

Security and Decentralization​

peaq achieves high security and decentralization by inheriting the security and decentralization of the Polkadot Layer 0. The Layer 0 is secured through validators and shares its security with all Layer 1s connected to it. Shared Security means that all Layer 1s connected to Layer 0 benefit from the economic security provided by its validators.

Throughput and Scalability​

The peaq network allows for very high and scalable throughput. With the updates of Polkadot 2.0 and asynchronous backing, The Polkadot Layer 0 will be able to handle up to 1,000,000 transactions per second. peaq can rent as many cores of the Layer 0 as required and thus, peaq’s transactions per second can scale into the hundreds of thousands.

Transaction Fees​

peaq provides low-cost transactions to its users, enabling transaction fees as low as $0.00025. This is made possible through peaq's unique architecture and economics, leveraging the high-quality, inexpensive blockspace provided by the Polkadot Layer 0. More detail on how the transaction fees are structured in the Economics section.

Sustainability​

peaq utilizes the greenest blockchain architecture available on the market. The Polkadot Layer 0 does not rely on miners for block production and consensus. Instead, it uses a set of nominators and validators to produce blocks and secure the network. Due to this, peaq's security doesn't depend on computation (and electricity!). Thus, it doesn't require vast amounts of energy and has a very small carbon footprint.

Developer Ecosystem​

peaq leverages the largest and second-largest developer ecosystems in Web3 (source). Thanks to EVM support and being built using Substrate, Ethereum, and Polkadot developers experienced developers can seamlessly build on peaq. Developers intending to build on peaq have the option to select pre-built pallets and use a large number of high-quality business logic ready-to-use on the Substrate Marketplace. Additionally, developers can copy Solidity contracts from EVM-based chains and deploy them on peaq without any extra work.

Smart Contracts and Pallets​

Leveraging the capabilities of Substrate, peaq natively supports Substrate pallets and ink! smart contracts. With the inclusion of Frontier, Substrate's Ethereum compatibility layer, peaq also supports EVM smart contracts.

There are several ways to define and deploy business logic on the peaq network:

EVM Smart Contracts​

Users can write Solidity smart contracts or port their existing contracts from Ethereum or any other EVM-compatible blockchain. These can be deployed on the peaq network without any modifications. Additionally, developers can use the same set of familiar tools for building, testing, and deploying contracts on peaq.

ink! Smart Contracts​

Beyond Solidity smart contracts, developers can also use Rust to write ink! smart contracts or port their existing ink! contracts from other Substrate-based chains.

Substrate Pallets​

Substrate offers the ability to extend blockchain functionalities with its modular components, akin to Lego blocks. This enables the seamless addition of new features to live blockchains for expanded functionality. Visit the Substrate marketplace to find applicable pallets developed by the community.