Pocket Network Monthly Recap | JULY 2022

Hello Pocket Network family! July was another busy month for Pocket Network, including a celebration of our Mainnet birthday! We’re here with a Monthly Recap to share some of the highlights with you.

Mainnet Turns 2

On July 28th, Pocket Network celebrated its 2nd birthday after launching Mainnet in 2020! With all the growth in our relay numbers, supported chains, node network, DAO voters and governance, and the protocol itself, in many ways it’s hard to believe all of this has been packed into only 2 years. We’ve gone from servicing 5 or 6 million relays per day just last year, all the way up to a daily average of 1 billion relays in recent weeks. We’re proud of the way we’ve scaled in 2 years’ time, and thrilled to share all the milestones with you.All of the growth in the above areas is an exciting sign of things to come, as we continue to onboard new chains for support and build on the core team and community’s efforts. As we head towards our next birthday, we’ll have our heads down working on v1, implementing key proposals, and finding new ways to keep our community involved in growing our role as the decentralized infrastructure solution. We’re already looking forward to sharing the next set of milestones with you as we power forward towards our next birthday celebration!

Network Overview

We saw solid month-over-month relay growth in July, as 30.59 billion relays were serviced across Pocket Network (up 15% from June). While we were a hair away from averaging 1 billion daily relays for an entire month, we actually achieved that average milestone on a weekly basis in our most recent Relay Recap.Overall, we had 13 days over the 1 billion relay mark in July, including a 6-day streak to end the month. Furthermore, relays showed a nice uptrend throughout the month, beginning at around 820 million daily relays and closing the period above 1.05 billion daily relays.

At the end of July, Pocket had 35,955 active nodes on the network, down about 19% from the end of June. Thanks to the extremely engaged community discussion of key proposals in the Forum, the incentive structure for nodes is changing, and larger nodes can now potentially reap more rewards (more on the discussion of the exact parameters below). We’ll likely continue to see more node consolidation as node runners adjust accordingly.

New Chain Support

We also announced support for another new chain in July:

• Osmosis Mainnet (0054)

Osmosis is a leading decentralized, interchain exchange in the Cosmos ecosystem. Osmosis has its own grant program, as well as a growing ecosystem of dApps focused on DeFi, payment infrastructure, wallet management and tooling, trading features and strategies, and more.Endpoints are available now in the Portal!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.On the TriForce side, we’ve got: Meter (Claimed), Aurora (Claimed), Metis (Claimed), and Astar (Unclaimed).See more here, including how to apply for TriForce and start earning rewards for onboarding new chains and growing relays.

Events, News, and Media

We had a number of events that we participated in with our community and partners throughout July, as well as news to share out. These included:

• POKT began trading on Bitrue, and Pocket Network CEO Michael O’Rourke joined Bitrue for an AMA.
• Cointelegraph detailed how Aave is leveraging Pocket Network to strengthen DApp development.
• The Economic Times, Bankless Times, MSN, and others spotlighted Pocket's TriForce initiative.
• AMBCrypto highlighted Pocket's entrance into the Polkadot ecosystem.
• Bitcoin.com featured an article on Pocket's key PUP-19 and PIP-22 proposals.
• Pocket Network CEO Michael O'Rourke was featured on Yahoo Finance.
• We participated in an AMA with our friends (and Pocket users) GoodDollar.
• Our CIO, Arthur Sabintsev, joined the “What the Fork is Crypto?” podcast.
• Our Co-Founder and Design Lead Valeria Benitez Florez spoke with The Kusamarian on their podcast, Space Monkeys.
• Pocket Network Head of Governance Jack Laing joined our friends at Thunderhead for a community-centric AMA.
• We shared highlights from our AMA with Moonbeam.
• We sponsored Ferrum Network’s Crypto Summer contest and giveaway.
• We hosted multiple Pocket Core Contributors Hours (for v0 and v1), where the community was able to follow along with Pocket development updates.
• We kicked off our Governance Town Halls, where our community can come together to discuss active proposals and share DAO experiences.
• We dropped more info on upcoming non-custodial staking, and how to be prepared for activation.
• We shared an article detailing how Pocket Network’s “cherry picker” works to distribute relays across the network.
• We shared 3 articles in our Pocket Partners series, detailing how Pocket is working with NEAR, Optimism, and Fantom.
• We shared out some of our community members’ takes on Pocket Network: “What Excites You Most About Pocket Network?” and “Describe Pocket Network in One Word.”
• We uploaded more highlights from key sessions and moments during Infracon - Pocket Community Conference in Punta Cana in May.

Engineering and Product Updates

We also have some recent engineering and product updates to share:

• Ledger progress. We're working on wrapping up the companion wallet experience before submitting our entire application package to Ledger for review and eventual acceptance into the Ledger Live ecosystem.
• Wallet solutions. We are working with the community on new wallet solutions that will bring unique user benefits and ease of entrance into the Pocket ecosystem, as detailed in the PEP-37 bullet below.
• We’re hiring! Pocket has several open positions on the Engineering and Product side, including UX Designer, Senior Backend Engineer, Developer Relations Engineer, Scrum Master, Head of Product Marketing, and Senior Developer Ecosystem Manager. Make sure to check out our AngelList page for more info on each of these.
• Building out the “Pocket Pressurizer” initiative. As part of this project, we’re ramping up our speed and stress testing and finding new ways to optimize our service - stay tuned for more on this!
• Working with new interfaces. Pocket is currently looking at what it would take to support RESTful calls on our protocol. Think of our approach to new interfaces like an addition of new lanes to the Pocket Network “highway” - we want to allow access for all different kinds of “vehicles” on this highway, and supporting RESTful calls is one step towards that goal.
• Auth0 integration. We recently integrated with Auth0, a respected third-party authentication and authorization service, to bolster the Portal login and account creation process. This gives users an option to create an account with email and password or with an existing Github account.

Governance Discussions

There were several important discussions presented and further hashed out in the Forum throughout the month of July.

• PUP-23: Stairway to Sustainable Economics. This proposal aims to update multiple pricing parameters for Pocket Network’s relay service, and enable Pocket to move forward with the crucial portal monetization initiative. Overall, the proposal should help price the Pocket Portal service to align with the value that developers are receiving, stabilize pricing for developers, and increase network security.
• PUP-21: Setting Parameter Values for the PIP-22 new parameter set. After the passage of PIP-22 enabled stake-weighted rewards for nodes, PUP-21’s goal is to set the actual parameters that will determine the amount and type of weighting. By setting four different parameters (ValidatorStakeFloorMultiplier, ValidatorStakeWeightMultiplier, ServicerStakeWeightCeiling, and ValidatorStakeFloorMultiplierExponent), the proposal would establish 4 tiers of rewards for nodes of different sizes. Nodes with 15,000-29,999 POKT would receive a base amount of reward per relay; nodes with 30,000-44,999 POKT would receive twice the base amount of reward per relay; nodes with 45,000-59,999 POKT would receive three times the base amount of reward per relay; and nodes with 60,000 or more POKT would receive four times the base amount of reward per relay. This proposal has been actively debated, with 60 comments at the time of writing, and is currently being voted on (86% approval rate).
• PEP-37: POKT Wallet - Chrome and Firefox Extension. The SendNodes team created a Chrome, Brave, and Firefox browser extension wallet that allows users to easily access their POKT. The extension features appealing UI, ED25519 support (one phrase, many addresses), up to 10 sub-addresses, nicknames for addresses, transaction monitoring, POKTwatch access, access to the native Pocket wallet, and more. PEP-37 sought a 1.38 million POKT reimbursement for the development of this extension. After discussion in the Forum, the wallet was open-sourced, helping the proposal pass with an 85% approval rate.

Thanks for checking out our Monthly Recap - until next time!