Pocket Network News | SEPTEMBER 2021

Remember our August newsletter? Over 560M relays were successfully processed in August. This was a new record, a big one. We’d love to start off this month’s newsletter by highlighting that this month (September), Pocket Network processed OVER 900M RELAYS (903.9M)! Make sure you read this month’s newsletter, it’s full of amazing stats and news!

📰 News

📡 >3.4B relays and counting...

Pocket Network now supports Avalanche!
Earlier this month, Avalanche announced that Pocket Network now supports their blockchain.

Avalanche users and developers are now able to take advantage of Pocket’s decentralized, reliable, and cost-effective node infrastructure.

And, most of you did!

In fact… while Avalanche’s default RPC went down this month, Pocket’s RPC remained online!

Care to switch over to our Endpoint? Check out this video to learn how to do so in under a minute:

Pocket endpoints are available today for Avalanche developers requiring consistent uptime, privacy, or scalability and have a mission focused on decentralization. Developers looking to work with us are eligible for 1 million free requests a day. Simply register with an email address through the Pocket Portal!

ETHOnline Hackathon
Pocket Network was one of the proud sponsors of the ETHOnline Hackathon for the second year in a row.

The Hackathon runs for a month from September 17th to October 15th with over $200k in prizes! It's a month-long hackathon with multiple single-day conferences designed to bring developers and creators together to experiment with NFTs, DAOs, DeFi, and L2. For more information, also see: http://online.ethglobal.com/

Fuse announces token swap with Pocket broadening access to full-node infra
After a successful governance proposal, Pocket Network agreed upon swapping 250k POKT for 750k FUSE.

The goal of the swap is to allow Fuse Foundation to stake POKT on behalf of the Fuse ecosystem to ensure the widest possible access to the decentralized transaction relay network for projects, communities, and developers building on top of Fuse. The Fuse tokens can be used by POKT for future community projects that require cross-chain liquidity i.e. bridges, general network fees, or staking and governance.

The full announcement can be found here: https://bit.ly/FUSEPOKT_TokenSwap

MCON event in Denver
As mentioned in last week’s WRR, Pocket was the proud sponsor of the MCON event in Denver mid September. We look back at a successful and fun event, in which new connections were made and attendees shared a common interest for DAOs and community-first projects.

Dark Forest Round 4

This sponsored public RPC endpoint will always be available during rounds, as well as between rounds. We don't take it down. Give it a go while testing out your strategies and plugins!

P.S. Our endpoint currently has the bandwidth/capacity of 25M requests per day (and 125 nodes per hour). For those that switch over, Alberto is bringing back the Dark Forest xDAI chain Fund for players to claim 5 $xDAI in exchange for using the Pocket-powered xDAI RPC endpoint. More information on this to follow shortly.

Avalanche Ask-Me-Anything with Pocket
Michael O’Rourke and Gabriel Cardona joined Avalanche in a Q&A session to discuss all Pocket. Missed the session? No problem, we have a recap available for you!

Sponsored Solana public RPC endpoint

We were happy to step in and support the Solana community with sponsored public RPC endpoints, which are ready to receive traffic!

Pocket Network to support Harmony with RPC service
Besides Avalanche and Solana, Pocket Network now also prepares to support Harmony. This means that Full and Archival Harmony Node operators will start earning POKT rewards for serving Harmony relays in our Pocket Network.

Harmony is an EVM-compatible multi-shard blockchain focused on Cross-Chain with Trustless Bridges, Social Wallets with Keyless Security and Cross-Border with FinTech Integrations. If you’re interested in learning more about them, feel free to read the full funding proposal here: https://talk.harmony.one/t/investments-decentralize-rpc-service-via-pocket-network-node-runners/2167

Pocket Portal Upgrades
The Pocket Portal, your Gateway to Web3, has received some incredible upgrades and new features. Have you spotted them yet?

With the Pocket Portal, developers can deploy within minutes to decentralized infrastructure that can service dozens of chains. And receive 1M free relays per day (pre-staked by Pocket Network) upon connecting your decentralized application.

Interested in taking a look to see what’s changed? Check out the portal.

Republic Crypto reviews Pocket Network
Did you spot the Republic Crypto project review for Pocket Network yet?

Republic Crypto certainly took their time to write this report and reviews the project, team & stakeholders, how Pocket Network works, what problems we solve, wPOKT/POKT, and much more at: https://republic.co/blog/crypto/pocket-network-primer

📈 Network Heartbeat 🩺
Throughout September, blockchain applications using the Pocket Gateway have driven a total of ~903.9  million requests.

All of which were successfully processed by the network. This is close to ONE BILLION relays processed in a single month, a massive accomplishment! Did you know that’s an increase of >~61% compared to August?

At the time of writing this, there are 6,363  staked nodes in Pocket Network.

Refresh of Weekly Relay Recap #40

Pocket Gateway Stats 09/02 to 09/30

The below image shows the total number of successful relays per day, week and month throughout July, August, and September.

The Pocket Network is seeing significant growth! And, with that an increasing number of POKT rewards for our node operators. The below pie chart perfectly displays the number of POKT minted this past week:

Most Relays in JULY: 16,062,953 (JULY 23rd)

Most Relays in AUGUST: 40,728,936 (August 31st)

Most Relays in SEPTEMBER: 41,658,221 (September 3rd)

Interested in helping us process these relays? If you’re new to running a node or you’re looking to get started with a node, then learn more here.

🧰 Developer Updates

Node Pilot Upgrade
Pocket Node Pilot Update v0.7.4 of the Node Pilot is now available!

Note: this is a mandatory update, especially for Avalanche node runners.

Added: Reveal private key functionality, Pocket Mainnet simulate relay toggle.

Updated: Improved restart node process, Passphrase errors fixed, Update Avalanche to x1.6.0.

Blockchain Whitelist Preparations
This month, Solana and Avalanche were added to the list of supported blockchains. We are currently making preparations to whitelist Harmony Shard 0 (0040) and Harmony Shard 0 Archival (0A40) in ~1 week on October 6th, 2021.

We advise node runners who wish to support these chains to begin making their own preparations by deploying their own nodes, getting up to sync, and simulating relays to ensure that everything is working as intended.

We would also like to address the fact that the Harmony chain represents 4 chainIds for each Mainnet and archival. As a note to Node Runners, we want to make sure that it is clear to all that requests will be received only on Harmony Shard 0 (0040) and Harmony Shard 0 Archival (0A40), hence why they are being whitelisted.

If you stake for the other shards you won’t receive any traffic or revenue from them.

DO NOT add the RelayChainIDs to your pocket node stake until you have ensured your nodes are working correctly, otherwise your Pocket node will be slashed.

If you need any support, please join us on Discord in the #node-runner channel.

Let us know which blockchains you’d like us to support and why!

⚖️ Economic & Governance Updates

All-hands Community Call Recap
Next week (October 8th), various members will tune in on Discord for the all-hands community call.

During this call, a range of topics will be discussed. The agenda is TBD, but we’d love your input!

RVSP for the next community call this coming OCT 8th at 12PM EST:

https://discord.com/channels/553741558869131266/812363956520878171/883395965069975562

Can’t join the call? No problem! We’ll provide a recap on our forum and a recording on our YouTube channel shortly after.

POKT<>wPOKT Bridge
The POKT<>wPOKT Bridge is under development. As progress is made, more information on this bridge is to follow. Stay tuned!

Governance Updates
PEP-10: Returning a Mistaken DAO Fee
Voting for PEP-10 closed earlier this month and successfully passed.

PEP-10 proposed to return POKT to a community member who accidentally swapped the number of POKT to transact with the transaction fee. As a result, 400k POKT were now accidentally paid as a transaction fee.

This is a special and very specific case in which the majority of that POKT ended up under DAO control and should not be confused with other cases where POKT may be lost due to sending to the wrong address, or losing keys.

🐦 Wall of Tweets and Memes

Did you spot these everyday handy pocket-tools for the Pocket Blockchain by Enrique yet?

🌉Connect with Pocket:

🦜 Follow Pocket on Twitter at @POKTnetwork

💬 Chat with the Pocket team and community in Discord

👾 Visit the Pocket Network Website

♻️ Learn more about wPOKT