Relay Recap #69 - Optimism Starts Strong, and Ethereum Spikes

Happy weekend everyone! We’re back with another Relay Recap. In the time frame covered here, Pocket Network relays were up again from the prior week, thanks in part to a large two-day spike of Ethereum traffic to kick things off. After dipping back down from that spike, daily relays increased incrementally in each of the final four days of this week.Throughout the week, the network serviced an average of987 million daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at more than 1.2 billion on June 9th. A weekly average of 1 billion relays per day is in our sights…In fact, although the POKTscan daily data point closed around 1.2 billion on June 9th, there was a time during the Ethereum spike where the rolling 24-hour total relays reached more than 1.4 billion - far and away a new high for Pocket Network.

Overall, 6.9 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing a 10% increase over the 6.3 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

Ethereum was the big story this week, thanks to a huge two-day spike throughout June 9th and 10th. After a week of around 50 million relays per day, Ethereum jumped to about 350 million daily relays during this spike - a 600% increase. This surge vaulted Ethereum past Polygon, Harmony, and other top chains, and placed the chain in the #1 spot temporarily, before coming back to the previous week’s levels. This also resulted in Ethereum’s share of total relays more than doubling, from 6% to 14%.Although the top 3 chains for relays (Polygon, Harmony, and Gnosis - xDai) all decreased in their respective shares of total relays, due to Ethereum’s proportional gains, each of these chains actually added about 0.1 billion relays compared to the previous week. This growth from some of the largest sources of relays was another reason we approached an average of 1 billion daily relays during this week.After being allowlisted on June 13th (see more below), Optimism immediately came out firing with relays. In just two days, Optimism crossed the 1 million daily relays mark, which rewarded the node runners that were servicing this chain handsomely (more on that in the “Node Earnings” section below). This start has already placed Optimism in the top 15 chains for relays - we can’t wait to see how traffic evolves from this chain’s ecosystem.Fantom also saw a nice increase beginning on June 12th, with a daily high of 59 million relays. Even with a couple of slight dips throughout other parts of the week, this surge still allowed Fantom to put up a weekly relay total that was about 12% higher than last week.Finally, several chains that have been accounting for a smaller proportion of relays showed steady signs of growth this week: namely, Solana, Avalanche, and Swimmer. These chains, respectively, grew their weekly relays 47%, 46%, and 19% compared to the prior period. It’s always exciting to see growth in chains like this, as they move towards having more of their ecosystems’ traffic supported by Pocket Network.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 on Pocket Network

Pocket Network continues to support more blockchains on its “Road to 100 Chains.” In fact, we were proud to share recently that we’ve officially hit the halfway point towards this goal: 50 supported blockchains on Pocket Network! The second half of 2022 should be an exciting ride as we push towards 100.

During the time frame covered here, we announced support for another new chain: Optimism Mainnet (0053).Optimism is a low-cost, high-speed Ethereum Layer-2 chain, with a rapidly growing ecosystem. Optimism boasts more than $800 million in on-chain value, and focuses on smooth UX and DevX to offer a much more user-friendly experience than similar chains.As their website states, Optimism is “equivalent” with EVM, not just “compatible.” This means developers can benefit from all Ethereum apps and tooling in as simple a way as possible. Thanks in part to this, Optimism already has a thriving ecosystem of projects ranging from DeFi, NFTs, bridges, on-ramps, wallets, DAOs, and more.Endpoints are available now in the Portal!

Node Earnings

From June 9th through June 15th, each of the top 3 relay chains produced at least 2.6 million in POKT earnings for nodes, with Polygon taking the top spot at 3.4 million. The ordering of the top 3 remained the same as last week, but (as you’ll see in the graphic below) Ethereum’s big jump in relays propelled it much closer to the top 3 than some of the other chains that had been in the 4th spot in prior weeks.

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

• Polygon
• Harmony
• Gnosis - xDai
• Optimism
• Ethereum

While the top 3 remained the same from last week, BSC and Fantom gave way to Optimism and Ethereum for the 4th and 5th spots this week.Ethereum’s rise up the average daily earnings list can be explained mostly by its huge two-day spike in traffic. On the other hand, Optimism’s high earnings per node were impacted not only by strong relay traffic immediately after being allowlisted, but also by the fact that there were a low number of nodes servicing this chain right after support for it was launched. We’ll keep an eye on how the amount of nodes servicing Optimism keeps pace with the growth in relay traffic from this chain, and see if it continues to be a regular on this list.

Node Infrastructure

As of June 16th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 48,548 active nodes across approximately 30 different countries, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting 50 different chains.

Wrap Up

• Total relays were up again compared to the prior week, thanks to a large spike from Ethereum and growth from several other top chains.
• Optimism has started strong after being allowlisted, and made its way onto the list of most profitable chains for node runners.
• Chains like Solana, Avalanche, and Swimmer showed exciting signs of growth as they build towards more of a share of total Pocket Network relays

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!