A Comprehensive Look at the Encryption x Bots Track: 5 Projects Worth Following - ChainCatcher

Source: Castle Labs Compiled by: Zhou, ChainCatcher

In the early 21st century, a man named Ray Kurzweil made an interesting observation.

He observed that the speed of technological advancement is accelerating, and with each new invention, its returns will grow exponentially over time. For example, the discovery of fire led to the emergence of metallurgy, which in turn facilitated the development of machinery, machinery then promoted the invention of computers, computers advanced the development of more sophisticated chip technology, and chip technology further propelled the progress of artificial intelligence, and so on.

The creation of new technologies continues to accelerate along this path, forming a feedback loop that allows humanity to continuously advance into new frontiers. We obtain better tools, which in turn speeds up research, allowing us to produce even better tools, thus accelerating the next cycle.

This has brought us to where we are today.

It seems that in the blink of an eye, we have entered a future with advanced artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, internet currencies enabled by cryptocurrencies, and now robots.

This new era driven by robotics is expected to bring prosperity to the workforce, where humanoid robots will be able to perform a variety of general labor tasks. Robots do not need rest, do not require vacations, and are much cheaper than humans.

Companies are gradually realizing that they can have a warehouse full of robots that can perform these tasks on a large scale, and at a lower cost than humans. This is quite an important breakthrough for them.

What role does cryptocurrency play in all of this? Cryptocurrency can be integrated at three different levels, whether in finance, coordination, or infrastructure. The next section will delve into the robotics stack, highlighting the most interesting projects in the crypto x robotics vertical.

Analyzing the Three Layers of Robot Technology Stack

This is how cryptography integrates into the robotics tech stack:

1. Financial Layer

• Cryptocurrencies have introduced a new financial track that allows robots to earn and make payments in a trustless and programmed manner.
• Robots can have cryptocurrency wallets, enabling them to receive and send micropayments that traditional payment methods cannot achieve. This is particularly important in an era of billions of robots interacting autonomously in the future, as blockchain technology can support this level of interaction.
• DAOs can also raise funds through tokenization, partially funding the ownership of robots or teams of robots, opening new investment/ownership avenues for investors.

2. Coordination Layer

• Coordination is the key to efficiently operating a network of robots. You need to find methods for task allocation, work verification, and coordinating incentive mechanisms.
• Smart contracts will serve as the coordinating logic, where work, payments, and confirmations can all be executed and verified on the blockchain.
• Governance can be used for fleet upgrades, deployment areas, pricing, etc., through voting by token holders or automatic adjudication.

3. Infrastructure Layer

• Robots need a shared infrastructure that includes positioning systems, maps, communication networks, identification systems, and computing power. If robots are to play an important role in society, they need maps to navigate this world designed for humans, be able to constantly determine their location, and understand how to communicate/identify each other. Cryptocurrency provides an open/decentralized way to achieve this without relying on traditional infrastructures like Google Cloud or AWS.
• Robots need a way to locate themselves accurately, and real-time kinematics ( RTK ) technology can achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy using GPS. This type of data is crucial for autonomous movement and navigation.
• To prove their identity, each robot can have an encrypted wallet, which can be used to validate its authenticity, sign telemetry, or verify proof of work data, and establish on-chain reputation.

Now that we have introduced the ways in which cryptocurrency interacts with robotics technology, let's take a look at how it works in practice and highlight some crypto x robot projects that should be on your radar.

peaq

Many of you may already know about peaq, but it's hard not to mention them when they become the largest robot token by market cap in the current cryptocurrency space.

peaq is an L1 platform aimed at building the backbone of the machine economy, treating machines, robots, and devices as “first-class citizens.” This means that any machine constructed (on land, in the air, at sea, or in space) can have applications built for it.

Machines hope to build applications on peaq because these applications can turn them into autonomous economic entities capable of self-generating income, coordinating, and upgrading, while developers can access the entire machine economy.

These machines then became participants on the local chain. There are already over 3 million machines on the peaq chain, and this number will only increase over time.

In the past few months, peaq announced:

• 1. Their robot SDK enables builders to more easily bring their machines on-chain, with autonomous sovereign IDs that allow robots to pay, receive payments, and verify their data.
• 2. The first tokenized robot farm providing vegetables for the local community.
• 3. The first robot to obtain autonomous identity

peaq also provides a variety of plug-and-play modules, allowing the team to avoid rebuilding the core track. Understanding this is crucial, as it transforms peaq into a robotic infrastructure service provider. This is a significant unlocking for developers, as they can skip the infrastructure setup and go straight to product launch.

As peaq positions itself as the financial/coordinating/identity layer for machines, they have great potential to truly become a leader in this field.

These layers are essential components of the intersection between cryptocurrency and robotics, bringing the financial economy into all machines, enabling them to scale according to demand without needing to rebuild these systems from scratch. If the scale of robotics reaches the expected level, there will be millions of autonomous robots engaging in large-scale trading and interaction.

$PEAQ currently has a market value of approximately 125 million USD, with a price of about 0.09 USD at the time of writing this article. As more and more projects use peaq's SDK to build and leverage its machine economy, they have greater room for development in the crypto x robot field.

Auki

Robots need to be able to interact with and navigate the world created by humans, which requires a significant amount of spatial processing power. They need to navigate around corners, cross sidewalks, know when to use crosswalks, and accomplish many tasks that we typically wouldn't think of.

Auki has created something called posemesh, which they describe as “a decentralized machine perception network and collaborative spatial computing protocol designed to enable digital devices to securely and privately exchange spatial data and computational power, thereby forming a shared understanding of the physical world.”

Ideally, this helps to make the physical world a place that robots can search, browse, and navigate, thereby enhancing the spatial awareness of robots. Auki is creating something for machines that resembles a decentralized nervous system.

Through posemesh, devices can request and provide sensor data, computation, storage, and various other services. Due to the numerous data applications, hierarchies, and datasets that can be contributed, Auki supports different machine profiles, allowing it to both contribute value to the network and derive value from it.

As of now, the market value of $AUKI is approximately 78 million USD, and its stock price is about 0.02 USD at the time of writing this article. Auki has just announced exclusive partnership negotiations with one of the largest robotics companies in China, with the potential to integrate its AR navigation technology into airlines. These are all good catalysts for future growth!

Geodnet

We mentioned RTK earlier in this report, but let us introduce it in more detail: RTK stands for Real-Time Kinematic, which is a high-precision technology built on conventional GPS/GNSS. It can achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy, which is the necessary infrastructure for robots, drones, autonomous vehicles, and spatial intelligent networks.

This infrastructure enables these machines to reliably navigate, map, and coordinate in the real world. Without RTK, their positioning would drift by meters, making autonomous movement, precise tasks, and verifiable on-chain data nearly impossible to achieve.

Typically, this is done using GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) stations and mobile stations.

A rover is a type of robot/drone that receives GNSS signals, estimates its position, and then applies correction data from nearby base stations to refine that estimate to centimeter-level accuracy in real-time.

Geodnet is a decentralized RTK network that uses its native token to incentivize base station operators. Geodnet is recognized as the largest RTK correction provider and has even gained widespread attention in the mainstream GNSS field.

The current market value of $GEOD is approximately 42 million USD, and as of the writing of this article, its stock price is about 0.13 USD. Just a few days ago, they opened pre-orders for the handheld GNSS RTK receiver, which may serve as a catalyst for their development.

CodecFlow

CodecFlow is a Solana-based project aimed at becoming the execution layer for robots and AI agents. Essentially, their goal is to give AI agents a sense of presence and agency, rather than just thinking or speaking. This will open up many possibilities, as AI agents currently have no way to perform physical tasks on a large scale in the real world.

To achieve this goal, Codec uses the visual-language-action ( VLA ) model.

These models allow agents to:

• 1. Capture and view their environment through the camera or screen.
• 2. Use AI models to understand what is happening.
• 3. Take action through software or physical models

The codec stack consists of two core components: Fabric and Operator Kit (OPTR).

Fabric acts like a smart router for computing power, serving as a unified orchestration layer that intelligently schedules workloads across cloud providers. It routes these workloads to the cheapest available GPU/computing power.

In this way, you can route the bot agent group to the most cost-effective cloud provider without being locked into more expensive options.

The Codec Operator Kit is essentially a development toolkit for programming these agents. It enables developers to create agents that can perceive, make decisions, and act reliably. It standardizes workflows and makes these agents more robust and scalable.

The current market value of $CODEC is approximately 13 million USD, and as of the writing of this article, its stock price is about 0.018 USD. With the release of the Operator Toolkit in August and the integration with peaq MachineDex, Codec's position in the robotics field has further improved.

Silencio

Sound is a sense that can provide you with more information about the world around you than you might imagine. Hearing the honking of cars, the sirens, or even a baby's cry is an extremely rich sensation.

Humans need years of learning and understanding to comprehend the sounds in daily life. Imagine creating a robot that needs to understand auditory cues—this is no easy task! For example, if you consider delivery robots, they need to be able to recognize emergency alarms and so on.

Silencio is building this auditory layer to allow anyone with a mobile phone or sensor to become a node in its network. If enough sound data can be collected, these robots will gain the necessary environmental perception capabilities as well as the required audio perception abilities.

Silencio has successfully accumulated daily active nodes from over 180 countries/regions, more than 1300 years of voice data, and over 1 million contributors uploading data to the network.

The current market value of $SLC is approximately 6 million USD, and the price at the time of writing this article is about 0.0002 USD. Silencio highlighted the importance of sound data for the future of robotics during their keynote speech in September, and if they can continue to solidify this advantage, they will have a bright future ahead.

End or Start?

Although this may be the end of this report, it does not mean the end of the era of robots, nor does it mean the end of robots x cryptocurrency. This is still an emerging field, and over time, the world will continue to evolve towards these areas.

Currently, the market value of robot stocks is approximately $112 billion, while the market value of the crypto x robot sector is only about $404 million, indicating that this track has ample growth potential.

There are many projects we could discuss, and many ways to explain robotics technology and its potential. This is a very broad topic that is rapidly expanding every day. As Kurzweil pointed out, it is likely to grow exponentially as we move into the future.

Soon, humanoid robots will become a norm in homes, moving around to do some trivial housework, just as seeing self-driving cars on the roads becomes increasingly common.

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