Happy weekend everyone! We’re back with another Relay Recap. This week brought mixed results for relays, as the total count was down marginally compared to last week. While some of the top relay chains took a dip this week, and had a large impact on the broader picture, the #1 chain (Polygon) was able to maintain almost the exact same relay figures from last week.Meanwhile, Ethereum had a huge two-day spike before returning to prior levels. This spike was another factor that had a big impact on the total count, balancing out the decreased relays from some of the other top chains.Throughout the week, the network serviced an average of892 million daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 1.3 billion on August 25th.

Overall, 6.2 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing a 3% decrease over the 6.4 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

Ethereum was a highlight yet again this week, as a huge two-day surge on August 25th and 26th carried the chain to a 63% increase in relays. Ethereum cleared 500 million daily relays on the 25th, and backed it up with more than 200 million on the 26th, before dipping back down to 80 to 100 million daily relays throughout the rest of the period. All in all, Ethereum continued to add to its proportional share of Pocket Network relays, moving from a 12% to 19% share this week as it took the #2 spot in total relays (behind Polygon).Dogechain has started out strong after being allowlisted recently, as it cleared 1 million daily relays almost immediately. After that initial milestone, the chain continued climbing all the way up to nearly 15 million daily relays during this period, before dipping back to around 9 million relays to close the period. This performance has helped Dogechain quickly move into the #13 spot out of all supported chains (just below Swimmer for the week), and has propelled the chain into the #3 spot in average daily earnings per node.In a week where several other large chains were down in relays, DFKchain posted a solid gain of 11% in relays during this period. This helped DFKchain to maintain a strong multi-week uptrend in relays, as it moved up from 40 million to 50 million daily relays.As mentioned earlier in this recap, this week was a mixed bag of relay performance, with Harmony and BSC being two of the top chains that saw a decrease in their overall share of Pocket Network relays (by 3% and 6% respectively). BSC in particular pulled back from its huge weekly rallies of late, as these two chains played a large part in the slight decrease in total relays (despite Ethereum’s big spike). Polygon, on the other hand, was one of the larger sources of relays that was able to maintain its performance from recent weeks, bumping up its proportional share of total relays from 26% to 27%.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

During the time frame covered here, we officially allowlisted one new chain: Meter Mainnet (0057).Meter describes itself as “the fastest growing hybrid Layer 1 and Layer 2 platform today,” with more than 8 million total transactions and nearly 8,000 addresses. Meter is a decentralized and scalable Ethereum sidechain, and prides itself on being censorship and front-running resistant, interoperable, and a stable source of sound money (via its “metastable” gas token). Meter is fully compatible with Ethereum at the RPC level, and supports chains like BSC, Avalanche, Moonbeam, and Moonriver (in addition to Ethereum).Developers can now get set up with Meter endpoints in the Pocket Portal, and node runners can service this chain to earn POKT rewards!

Note: interested in the next set of chains that we’re eyeing for support? Pocket’s upcoming claimed chains include: Starknet, Starknet Testnet, Polygon Super Testnet, Arbitrum, and Arbitrum Testnet.

Node Earnings

From August 25th through August 31st, there were 3 chains whose nodes earned more than 1 million POKT.  Like last week, Polygon still had a significant edge in this category, but this time Ethereum bumped BSC out of the #2 spot that it had temporarily held. Meanwhile, Harmony maintained the #3 spot that it was in last week.

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

• Polygon
• Ethereum
• Dogechain
• Harmony
• BSC

Similar to the above total earnings stats, Polygon, Ethereum, and Harmony took down some of the top spots on the list this week. However, it was newly-supported Dogechain that made an appearance in the #3 spot this week, thanks to a smaller number of nodes servicing the chain and splitting its rewards. Lastly, even with a sizable drop in relays compared to last week, BSC managed to hold a spot on the list, dropping from #2 to #5.

Node Infrastructure

As of August 31st, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 29,235 active nodes across 24 different regions, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting dozens of different chains.Note: PIP-22 and PUP-19 are bringing 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

• Ethereum relays jump more than 60% after a huge two-day spike, and the chain significantly grows its share of total relays yet again.
• Dogechain has come out of the gates hot, approaching 15 million daily relays and taking a Top 3 spot in average node earnings for the week.
• In a down week for several other top chains, DFKchain posted 11% relay growth and kept up a strong multi-week uptrend.
• Amongst the top sources of relays, Harmony and BSC pulled back this week, while Polygon was able to maintain the same stats from the prior period.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!