Four years ago, a tech start-up co-founded by Maltese entrepreneur Max Thake had just attracted €750,000 in investment and was looking to reach €5 million.

At the time, Thake spoke with passion about the start-up’s blockchain-based technology called ‘peaq’ and said he and his colleagues were “looking to the future”.

The future is now, and judging by recent developments the platform has continued to grow.

Recently, peaq secured $35 million in two rounds of private and public funding and is now valued at a third of a billion dollars.

Commenting on the technology’s meteoric rise, Thake, who lives as a digital nomad, said it was “crazy to see it grow so much,” but said it was “still only a fraction of what we envisage”.

Peaq is a technology for building networks that connects users to crowd-sourced information and services by linking and monetising internet-connected devices.

Thake and his colleagues think peaq won’t just be a successful venture; they believe it has the potential to change the world by ushering in a new era of democratised, user-owned industries.

And judging by the latest round of funding, they’re not the only ones. So, what is the secret to their continued success?

“Resilience; we had to go to hell and back to make this a success,” Thake said, adding he hoped peaq’s success could serve as an inspiration for young technology enthusiasts in Malta.

Stressing the importance of “vision, passion and adaptability”, the young entrepreneur said he and his colleagues had learned how to “take the hits and make the changes that are necessary”. 

But with blockchain technology – a decentralised sequential list of encrypted records called ‘blocks’ that can be used to store information such as financial transactions – being complex and arguably still viewed with scepticism, what has been the reaction of family and friends to his venture?

“Sometimes I almost got that look of, ‘oh, that’s sweet’ – especially in my early 20s,” he said, but noted that as the technology became more widely known and the start-up grew, attitudes had changed.

Asked if he had always gravitated towards technology, Thake said his co-founder Leonard Dorlöchter was “the tech guy”, with his own role “more on the creative side and setting the long-term vision for the company...”

So, what is peaq?

Describing the technology underpinning the platform as the “next evolutionary step of the internet,” Thake explained how peaq connects users and devices on vast networks that offer crowd-sourced alternatives to company-driven solutions.

Such alternatives could offer services like ride hailing, communal 3D printing and goods deliveries, provide information on traffic and pollution and even establish crowd-sourced infrastructure such as WiFi and 5G networks, he said.

Networks powered by peaq offer information and services to users while putting power – and money – back into the hands of those who provide the service.

The more a user contributes to the network, the more they are rewarded in peaq tokens, which afford the user more of a say in how the network develops and which can also be exchanged for regular currency, he explained. 

Think cooperatives, but high-tech.

“In the past, the internet put power into the hands of a few, and there’s enormous inequality in the world today... but peaq doesn’t rely on Google or other big companies,” Thake said.

This technology is about giving up power, giving it back to the people

Using ride hailing as an example, the entrepreneur said a network offering a service like Uber would be able to do so more competitively while avoiding the fees leveraged by such platforms.

“The network will be able to undercut companies like Uber at a rate they can’t compete with, essentially using their own business model against them,” he said, stressing that unlike existing platforms, drivers would earn money while owning a part of the network.

The old versus the new

“The long-term vision is to power the ‘Economy of Things’,” said Thake, referencing an economic model where internet-connected devices – the so-called ‘internet of things’ including health trackers and charging stations, for example – generate cryptocurrency as they provide data to others.

Emphasising that peaq is focused on providing “real-life solutions”, Thake pointed to an app called Silencio, which monitors background noise and combines that with readings from other users to help people make informed decisions about where they live or go on holiday.

As the app collects data, the user is rewarded with tokens which can then be traded or sold in a similar way to shares in a traditional company.

So, what makes peaq different to a traditional company?

“This technology is about giving up power, giving it back to the people,” said Thake, contrasting this with established models where, as a business grows, a controlling minority continues to exert most of the influence.

Controversies

Despite the promises of blockchain technologies and in particular cryptocurrencies, a branch of the blockchain, in recent years the tech world has been rocked by a series of high-profile scandals involving the technology.

In March, disgraced former cryptocurrency whizzkid Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $11 billion in damages after being found guilty of defrauding investors.

Do they worry Thake?

“It’s annoying; every time this kind of thing happens, we think, ‘here we go again’, he said, but stressed he was confident that despite the short-term damage, such scandals “won’t sink the industry,” while cautioning against blindly investing in new technologies.

And while Malta’s forays into the blockchain world haven’t always gone smoothly – its infamous ‘blockchain island’ marketing drive derided as a flop after failing to attract tech start-ups – Thake doesn’t think a government-led approach is the right one and instead argues for a crowd-driven embrace of crowd-sourced technology.

If we want to become a blockchain island, we don’t have to ask permission.”