Relay Growth Returns, with Multiple Chains up 20-30%

It’s been a week to remember, to say the least, but throughout all the upheaval in the market Pocket continues to chug along and service the multi-chain data needs of all of Web3. As usual, Friday brings us to another Relay Recap highlighting the trends in the chains that Pocket is servicing.This week, we saw the relay totals climb back to more normal levels, as the network returned to a daily relay average of more than 1 billion. Relays stayed largely consistent around 1.1 billion per day, with the high water marks coming earlier in the week before a marginal dip the remainder of the week.Throughout this period, the network serviced an average of1.1 billion daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 1.17 billion on November 5th.

Overall, 7.7 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing an 11% increase over the 6.9 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

Evmos was one of the highlights this week, as relays jumped 37% for the period. Daily relays climbed throughout the week, with a big surge towards 15 million daily relays to cap off the week.Polygon Mumbia was also noteworthy during this period, both for its 39% increase in relays and for its appearance in the Top 5 average relays per node (more on that below). The chain saw a large increase on November 4th and 5th, nearly touching 1 million daily relays, before dipping back towards 700,000 daily relays the remainder of the week.FUSE also had a solid relay gain of an even 30%. The chain stayed mostly steady around last week’s highs of 15 to 16 million daily relays, before setting new highs approaching 17 million to end the period.Optimism was another chain with a strong performance this week, growing relays by 29%. Optimism started with a dip this week, but rapidly climbed back up above last week’s highs, keeping a multi-week uptrend going and approaching 50 million daily relays. This helped the chain move up past Harmony and into the #6 spot for total relays.Gnosis - xDai wasn’t far behind, as the chain had 26% relay growth of its own. Gnosis stayed above 100 million daily relays throughout the entire week, with a push towards 140 million daily relays at the end of the week. With this performance, Gnosis - xDai held down the #4 spot for total relays, and moved up to a double-digit share of all relays across the network (10%).Next up we have BSC, with a 25% increase in relays for the week. BSC stayed mostly steady around 150 million daily relays, and bumped its share of total relays from 12% to 14%.Moonbeam also posted relay growth of 22% this week, even with a dip to start the period. After that dip, Moonbeam stayed remarkably consistent at about 4 million relays for the next 4 days, and then surged above 6.5 million daily relays to close the period.Finally, to round out the “20% club,” we had DFKchain with an even 20% relay growth for the week. DFKchain climbed steadily towards 80 million daily relays, surpassing last week’s highs.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 November 3rd through November 9th, we saw both Polygon and Ethereum clear 1 million in POKT earnings yet again, with BSC rounding out the Top 3. This ordering of the top 3 remained the same from the prior Recap.

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

• Polygon
• Ethereum
• BSC
• Polygon Mumbai
• Gnosis - xDai

We had some movement on this list compared to the prior week, with Goerli Archival completely falling off the list and Polygon, Ethereum, and BSC moving up to reclaim the top 3 spots. Also noteworthy is Polygon Mumbai’s appearance in the Top 5, as the chain’s nearly 40% growth in relays, combined with less than 200 nodes servicing the chain, vaulted Polygon Mumbai to #4 in average relays per node for the time being.

Node Infrastructure

As of November 9th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 26,919 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 up more than 160 since the last Relay Recap.Note: PIP-22 and PUP-19 have 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 new incentive structures that have been rolled out in v0.9.0.

Wrap Up

• A collection of chains post relay gains between 20 and 30%, helping the network return to weekly relay growth.
• Polygon Mumbia relays jump nearly 40%, helping the chain move into the #4 spot for average daily relays per node.
• Pocket continues servicing all of Web3, even in the midst of market upheaval.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!