Crankk integrates Meshtastic!

With upcoming off-grid crypto payments

Crankk has been around for more than 2 years now building a LoRaWAN network that aims to become sufficiently widespread and resilient enough to monetize.

Meshtastic is a popular open source project that is also based on LoRa as the radio protocol to establish a mesh network of peer to peer LoRa nodes. Meshtastic defines many message types suitable to communicate text as well as sensor information. In our view LoRaWAN and Meshtastic are similar in nature as a layer of communication over LoRa. With Meshtastic’s existing MQTT integration, bridging geographically distant parts of the network is also very well solved.

Given that Crankk has been providing support on the LoRaWAN side it seemed natural to develop a solution for Meshtastic as well, and in the future, any network where a distributed physical infrastructure solution makes sense. This is to incentivize participation and grow those networks even larger with really comprehensive global coverage preserving the fundamentally enthusiast nature of participation but providing an option to participate, monetize and earn as well.

We feel that Crankk is uniquely positioned to provide support for Meshtastic for the following reasons

• Crankk implements a truly Web3 solution where participating nodes are in direct communication with blockchain nodes and nothing else. This preserves the existing level of privacy for Meshtastic users. On the blockchain each node identifies with their wallet address and act on its behalf, solely controlled by the wallet owner.
• Other DePIN solutions frequently operate a central infrastructure that controls everything centrally and only feeds information to the blockchain for reward purposes. This is not the case for Crankk. Integration with a true P2P mesh network such as Meshtastic would not be possible with that kind of centralized structure.
• Crankk operates on the Kadena blockchain that provides even further advantages. Kadena gas fees are sufficiently low to enable a Web3 solution that inherently generates more blockchain traffic and still be profitable at the same time.
• Meshtastic nodes come in multiple versions. Some have Wi-Fi or even Ethernet and some don’t. Blockchains rely on a sufficiently stable connection to the internet and therefore nodes with Wi-Fi or other connectivity qualify. For practical purposes this mostly means an ESP32 based node.
• We believe that a significant percentage of Meshtastic nodes are operated under such circumstances, being mostly stationary with reliable internet connection.

Why would you participate?

We believe that participating in Crankk with your existing or future Meshtastic node can make sense.

• If you already own and operate a node it can make sense to start participating and possibly learn about DePIN networks, how they are structured and what they aim to add to the full equation. Not to mention, earn, with only a small investment.
• If you’ve already heard about Meshtastic but haven’t pulled the trigger on getting a device, this could be the extra motivation you needed to experience it first-hand and also learn about DePIN, crypto and how they work.

Some concrete information on future participation

Crankk is currently alpha-testing a first-version solution. It is already working well with a limited amount of alpha-testers. We’re working toward being able to accept beta-testers in the near future.

Since Meshtastic is an open source project we took the liberty of adding our code to the solution as a fork/pr and keep it open source as well. Meshtastic will have the option to merge our solution when our solution reaches maturity or keep it as a separate but open repo maintained by Crankk. It means that the firmware version that includes the Crankk part is for now separately downloadable and can be uploaded to the device at the owner’s discretion. Crankk’s addition is aimed to be in no way detrimental to or interfering with any existing or future Meshtastic features and simply adds blockchain communication plus an infrequent silent message to prove beaconing — witnessing if we stick to the most frequently used terminology.

Earning the Crankk token

As mentioned, Crankk operates on the Kadena blockchain. Very low but non-zero gas fees apply in the native Kadena token, KDA. 1 KDA is roughly a dollar at this moment and should be sufficient to cover Meshtastic node gas fees for weeks. Crankk was built to operate a LoRaWAN network, so gateway operators get 80% of the issued tokens. The source of Crankk tokens for Meshtastic rewards will come from project allocated tokens and tokens purchased by the project.

The killer feature we hope you’ll like

We’re working on a way to enable crypto payments with any Meshtastic device offgrid/offline. The way it’s meant to work is that any Meshtastic device with the Crankk firmware will be able to compose a blockchain transaction if it has a wallet configured. This transaction can be sent over Meshtastic and can reach a node with internet connectivity. Once such device receives it, it will send it to the blockchain, wait for confirmation and send the confirmation back over LoRa. This may take a few minutes, but there are not many (or any) solutions out there that can do this right now. We sincerely hope that a lot of people will like this flexibility and freedom so that we can continue integrating payments for other blockchains as well.

Contributing to the Meshtastic project with donations

Crankk is also committed to contributing to the Meshtastic project with donations of 20% of the income generated by Meshtastic devices including future license fees. Every income that Crankk may receive is recorded on the blockchain so this commitment will be easily and independently verifiable.

Thanks for your attention and enjoy the ride!

For the Crankk specific onboarding guide, click here.

Sincerely, the Crankk Team