Have you ever imagined your phone camera making money for you while you drive? Drive&, a drive-to-earn app by NATIX, is making it a reality. With $3.5 million in funding, Drive& is taking the earn-to-drive concept to a whole new level by using AI and edge computing to turn your smartphone into a data-processing hub. By accessing information about traffic congestion, road conditions, and other parameters on the go through your phone’s camera, you can earn rewards while you drive with the Drive& app.
Now, NATIX has joined peaq, the Web3 network powering the Economy of Things. The AI-powered network will leverage peaq’s tools for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), offering rewards to device owners who share anonymized insights.
This includes a self-sovereign peaq ID for each sensor in the network, with access managed through peaq’s role-based access management function. Device owners will earn rewards in the NATIX ecosystem by anonymously sharing insights. The partnership will begin with a proof-of-concept project integrating peaq IDs in Drive&.
Drive&, which has been downloaded by more than 5,500 users since its April 2023 launch, creates maps of roads and detects events such as traffic congestion.
The second phase of the integration will enable Drive& users to earn rewards through peaq’s machine rewards mechanism, which distributes part of network revenues to connected devices. It could first be tested on krest, peaq’s sister network, which is going live on Kusama in Q2.
Peaq co-founder Leonard Dorlöchter said DePINs could scale faster than traditional infrastructure providers and that using the model for consumer devices such as smartphones amplified this scalability.
NATIX co-founder and CEO Alireza Ghods said the Web3 tech stack and AI turned the proliferation of sensors into a blessing by enabling both private and business users to do more with existing infrastructure while ensuring privacy through edge computing.
Peaq’s set of tools and machine rewards worked as a power multiplier for the DePIN model, boosting functionality and rewards for users, Ghods added.
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