Klaytn Relays Surge 250%, as DFK Comes to the Chain

Happy weekend everyone! We’re back with another Relay Recap.Relays were down slightly compared to last week, primarily due to dispatcher issues that the network experienced on December 4th, which impacted relays. Ahead of those issues, daily relays rose to nearly 1.2 billion on December 3rd, and bounced back above 1 billion for the remaining 3 days of the period afterwards.Even with the decreased relay count on the 4th, we saw Ethereum able to maintain the same number of weekly relays, and several other chains actually posted significant growth this week (more on that in the Chain Highlights below).Throughout this period, the network serviced an average of997 million daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 1.19 billion on December 3rd.

Overall, 7 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing a 6% decrease over the 7.4 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

Klaytn was already in the news this week, given the launch of DeFi Kingdoms’ Serendale on Klaytn, and we saw this excitement carry over in a big way to the chain’s weekly relay count. Klaytn’s relays jumped 248% this week, with a huge spike beginning December 5th and going through the end of the period. In that time, Klaytn’s daily relays went from less than 50,000 to nearly 400,000. In fact, the actual launch of DFK on Klaytn wasn’t even until December 7 (the last day of this Relay Recap period), so we’ve only seen Klaytn’s relays skyrocket even more since then. Currently, Klaytn has surged all the way up to more than 3.6 million daily relays, and has moved up just outside of the Top 15 chains for daily relays. The way things are going now, we’ll have much more on Klaytn in next week’s Recap as well! If you’re playing DFK, make sure to check our Public RPC URL page and get set up with a Pocket endpoint for Klaytn if you haven’t already done so!We also had NEAR relays up 41% this week, thanks to the chain’s daily relays nearly doubling from last week’s highs on December 2nd and 3rd. During this run-up, daily relays approached 1 million. Following that two-day stretch, relays were volatile the rest of the period, closing the last 2 days of the week just over half a million relays per day. As we’ll discuss below, this weekly performance was enough to move NEAR up to the #4 spot on the list of top chains for average earnings per node.Like NEAR, Moonbeam relays were also up exactly 41%, with a big sustained jump from December 2nd to the end of the period (other than the network-wide drop on December 4th). Moonbeam is now maintaining around 9 to 10 million daily relays, after being around 6 million per day all of last week.We also had a big week from BSC, as the chain grew its relays by 19%. Outside of the dip on the 4th, BSC has been trending back up the last 2 weeks. In fact, BSC finished this week with two straight days above 75 million relays, compared to last week’s high around 60 million.FUSE was also noteworthy for posting growth in a down week, as its relays were up 5%. This was largely due to a big day on December 3rd, in which it cleared 55 million relays, before returning to last week’s levels around 35 million afterwards.Finally, Ethereum also deserves a mention here, for posting the same 2.3 billion weekly relay figure as last week, even with the dispatcher issues. This was thanks to a big day over 450 million relays on December 3rd, before dipping to last week’s daily totals around 300 million. Ethereum continues to keep its grip on the #1 spot amongst all chains, and has opened up a wider lead over Polygon of late.For the developers out there, remember to visit the Pocket Portal to get set up with RPC endpoints for these and other chains that Pocket Network supports!

Node Earnings

From December 1st through December 7th, Ethereum and Polygon remained the only two chains to clear 1 million in POKT earnings, with Ethereum maintaining its cushion over Polygon. Meanwhile, Gnosis - xDai continued to hold the #3 spot substantially behind Ethereum and Polygon. DFKchain and BSC remain the next two chains that are on the outside looking in on this Top 3 list.

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

• Polygon Mumbai
• Ethereum
• Polygon
• NEAR
• Gnosis - xDai

This list stayed largely the same from the previous week, with only NEAR and Gnosis - xDai swapping positions.Once again, Polygon Mumbai and NEAR have been able to maintain their spots on this list, even with relatively smaller numbers of relays, since these chains have less nodes opting to service them compared to other chains. Even with these chains appearing on the list for several weeks now, we’ve seen the number of nodes servicing these two stay about the same - we’ll see if supply and demand changes that picture soon, and more nodes start coming in to take advantage of the higher average earnings per node.It was also noteworthy to see both Ethereum and NEAR actually grow their average relays per node this week, even with the decrease in weekly relays due to the temporary chain issues on December 4th. Ethereum was up just barely from last week’s 12,772 figure, while NEAR was up more substantially (from 4,100 to 5,774).

Node Infrastructure

As of December 7th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 25,127 active nodes across more than 20 different countries, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting dozens of different chains.This total node count was down just over 1% from the previous week.Note: PIP-22 and PUP-19 brought 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 incentive structures that have been rolled out in v0.9.0.

Wrap Up

• Klaytn relays surge 248% in tandem with the DFK launch, with even more growth coming after this period of data.
• Moonbeam and NEAR both post 41% gains in relays.
• BSC is trending back up, with 19% relay growth.
• Ethereum stays steady at the top, even in a down week for the overall network.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!