BSC is on a Tear, as Relays Bounce Back

Happy weekend everyone! We’re back with another Relay Recap. This week was a bounce-back for relays, as we saw a return to growth after a temporary dip in Ethereum and other chains last week. After one day below 900 million relays to start this period, relays for the next six days stayed consistent between 900 and 950 million, with an incremental trend upwards to close the week on a high.Throughout the week, the network serviced an average of915 million daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 951 million on August 24th.

Overall, 6.4 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing an 11% increase over the 5.7 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

BSC was the big story for the week, as the chain posted a 146% gain in relays. After hovering between 60 to 80 million relays last week, BSC had a big spike to 160 million relays on August 19th, and then maintained around that level for the remainder of the period. This was already a Top 5 chain, and this week’s growth allowed BSC to vault into the #2 spot out of all chains (in a virtual tie with Harmony). BSC now has a 17% share of all Pocket Network relays, up from 8% last week.After relays dropped last week, Ethereum started to get back on track this week, posting a 9% gain in relays. Relays have generally been climbing back up since August 13th, although it’s been a volatile ride. Between August 21st and August 23rd, Ethereum had multiple peaks and dips - overall, though, it’s been a positive sign to see relays recovering from last week’s dip.Moonbeam also showed positive signs of growth, boosting its relays by 57% this week. After spending the prior period mostly below 800,000 daily relays, Moonbeam had six days above the 1 million mark this week, including a peak above 1.2 million.Lastly, DFKchain was able to grow its relays by 27% this week. The weekly chart was fairly volatile with a couple of dips mixed in, but overall we saw a nice uptrend to approach 50 million daily relays.Remember to visit the Pocket Portal to get set up with RPC endpoints for these and other chains that Pocket Network supports!

New Chains Supported

During the time frame covered here, we officially allowlisted two new chains: Metis Mainnet (0058) and Dogechain Mainnet (0059).As we mentioned in last week’s Recap, Metis is a decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 rollup platform that features low gas fees, fast transactions, native storage, high security, and simple implementation.Dogechain, a Layer 2 for Dogecoin, has been building its hype-train of late and is aiming to bring NFTs, games, and DeFi for Dogecoin users.Developers can now get set up with Metis and Dogechain endpoints in the Pocket Portal, and node runners can service these chains to earn POKT rewards!Note: interested in the next set of chains that we’re eyeing for support? Pocket’s upcoming claimed chains include: Aptos, Cosmos, RSK, Concordium, and Manta.

Node Earnings

From August 18th through August 24th, there were 3 chains whose nodes earned more than 1 million POKT, compared to only 2 chains clearing that threshold the prior week.  Like last week, Polygon still had a significant edge in this category, but this time it was BSC that took the #2 spot, rather than Harmony (thanks to BSC’s huge relay growth). As BSC pushed Harmony down to third place, it was Ethereum that fell off this Top 3 list.

In terms of average daily POKT earned per node, the top 5 chains at the end of this time frame were:

• Polygon
• BSC
• Harmony
• Polygon Mumbai
• ETH

Similar to the above total earnings stats, BSC’s surge into the #2 ranking pushed Harmony down a spot compared to last week. Also of note here is newly-supported Polygon Mumbai’s appearance on the list, thanks to a smaller number of nodes servicing the chain and splitting its rewards. As Polygon Mumbai made the Top 5, Gnosis - xDai fell off this list, and Ethereum dropped from #3 last week to #5 this week.

Node Infrastructure

As of August 18th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 29,874 active nodes across 24 different regions, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting dozens of different chains.Note: PIP-22 and PUP-19 are bringing big changes to the incentives that shape Pocket’s node infrastructure, by way of introducing stake-weighted servicer rewards and increased validator rewards. We’ll likely continue seeing a consolidation of nodes, as node runners and providers combine stakes to take advantage of these new incentive structures that are being rolled out in v0.9.0.

Wrap Up

• BSC more than doubles its weekly relays and moves into the #2 spot for both total relays and average node earnings.
• Ethereum starts to bounce back from a temporary dip last week.
• Moonbeam and DFKchain show strong growth.
• Polygon Mumbai makes an appearance in the list of Top 5 chains for average node earnings.
• Dogechain and Metis are officially allowlisted and begin generating relays.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!