Polygon Helps Take Relays to Third Straight ATH

We’re back with another Relay Recap, and it’s a third straight record-breaking week!Thanks especially to Polygon’s continued march upwards (and its own new daily all-time high), we now have yet another new all-time high in weekly relays for the third Relay Recap in a row! The 8.9 billion relays serviced this week cleared last week’s all-time high of 8.3 billion relays by about 8 percent.Continued steady performance in relays got us to this new high mark, as not a single day during this week came in below 1.2 billion relays. We also had multiple days (October 15th and 18th) flirting with the all-time high of 1.342 billion relays, although they fell just short of setting that new milestone. We’ve got a feeling that daily high may be getting replaced again before too long…

Throughout the week, the network serviced an average of1.28 billion daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 1.32 billion on October 15th.

Overall, 8.94 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing an 8% increase over the 8.31 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

As has been the case for weeks on end now, Polygon’s steady climb upwards was one of the top stories for this Recap. Relays were up 21% for the chain, as the top chain’s share of total relays bumped back above 30% again (33% for the week). We also saw Polygon hit yet another daily all-time high of its own this week, with 448.8 million relays on October 18th! The way relays have been trending for this chain, we may see Polygon clearing the 500 million daily relays milestone before too long.Dogechain had an impressive week of its own, with relays up 66%. The chain has been bouncing back from a dip towards 1 million daily relays last week, as it has been marching back up since October 8th. Dogechain finished this period on a high, approaching 5 million daily relays.Boba also had a big week, increasing relays by 25%. The chain was mostly steady between 1.5 and 2 million daily relays from October 11th to October 18th, before jumping to nearly 3 million daily relays to close the period.Moonbeam wasn’t far behind Boba, as the chain saw 24% relay growth of its own. Moonbeam climbed throughout the week before a slight dip to end the period. This chain also joined Polygon in posting a new daily all-time high of its own, as it cleared 4.5 million relays on October 18th!IoTeX decided to join in on the all-time high party as well, as its 12.5 million relays on October 19th were a new high for the chain! This milestone helped IoTeX to boost its weekly relays by 14%, with a healthy jump for the last 2 days of the week balancing out a 4-day dip from some of last week’s highs to start the period.Lastly, Avalanche relays were also up 14% for the week. Even with some volatility in peaks and dips throughout the week, Avalanche has still been putting up a general uptrend over recent weeks, and was able to finish this period on a high note above 28.5 million daily relays.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 October 13th through October 19th, we saw Polygon approaching 3 million in POKT earnings, with Ethereum nearly cracking the 2 million mark. We also had BSC clear the 1 million earnings threshold, which the chain was unable to do in the prior week. This ordering of the top 3 remained the same from last week.

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

• Polygon
• Ethereum
• Boba
• BSC
• Gnosis - xDai

Boba was the big change on the list, as its 25% increase in relays helped it move from the #6 spot in average relays per node last week up to the #3 spot this week. Boba has hundreds of nodes servicing the chain, rather than tens of thousands like some of the other chains on this list, resulting in more relays spread amongst the nodes that choose to service it.As Boba made an appearance in the Top 5, DFKchain fell off the list compared to last week, and BSC and Gnosis - xDai were each bumped down one. We saw no change at the top, as Polygon and Ethereum held their positions from last week.

Node Infrastructure

As of October 19th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 26,884 active nodes across more than 20 different countries, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting dozens of different chains.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.

Update on RC-0.9.1.1

As announced in our official Discord, as of October 17th we reached 24% of nodes upgraded to 0.9.1.1. This placed us at more than one third of the way towards the 67% adoption required before non-custodial staking can be reactivated.You can find the release now in Github.Also, for node runners using Lean Pocket: PoktBlade has provided a fork that is compatible with RC-0.9.1.1.We are actively testing Lean Pocket internally to integrate with mainnet in RC-0.9.2.

Wrap Up

• Growth from Polygon and others leads to a third straight weekly all-time high in relays.
• Dogechain relays jump more than 60 percent.
• IoTeX and Moonbeam also post their own all-time highs in daily relays.
• Boba moves into the Top 5 for average daily relays per node.
• Node runners: make sure to update to 0.9.1.1 ASAP!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!