Happy weekend everyone! We hope you're wrapping up 2022 in style.Relays saw another healthy rise this week, as Ethereum knocked down its own previous all-time-high and continued to solidify its position as the #1 chain. Most of the high points came early in this week, including total relays flirting with their own all-time mark (particularly on December 16th).We also saw Gnosis - xDai post strong growth in the Top 3, and inch closer to Polygon for the #2 spot (as of writing, it has now actually flipped Polygon for that spot).While relays dipped marginally to end the time frame covered in this Relay Recap, we’ve already seen a huge bounceback over the last couple of days, with new all-time-highs now in the network’s sights again. What a way to wrap up the year!Speaking of yearly wrap-ups, we’ve recently published a deep-dive recap of all the work that our Protocol team was up to in 2022, and some of the team’s “big bets” for the future. If you haven’t checked it out already, make sure to give it a read!

See What Pocket's Protocol Team Was Up To in 2022

Throughout this period, the network serviced an average of1.25 billion daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 1.32 billion on December 16th.Overall, 8.7 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing a 6% increase over the 8.2 billion relays the prior week.

Chain HighlightsPolygon Archival was one of the headlines this week, as relays increased 132%. Relays started rising last week (on the 13th), and started this period above 4 million per day, after being below half a million much of last week. The chain has been fairly volatile of late, and ended up dipping back below half a million to close this period.We also saw big things from Moonbeam, with relays jumping 59%. Moonbeam had a big move up on December 13th, and continued rising throughout most of this week, peaking near 20 million daily relays before dipping the next three days.OEC also posted relay growth of 46%, and has been trending up overall for the last couple of weeks, albeit with some peaks and valleys. OEC touched last week’s high of 2.6 million daily relays a few different times during this period, staying mostly steady around that level.Like Moonbeam, Moonriver also had a big week, growing relays by 40%. Relays for this chain had been slowly and steadily rising since the 11th, and then nearly doubled from 1.6 million per day to above 3 million on the last day of the period.Gnosis - xDai continues to put out strong stats in the #3 spot, with relays up 30% this week. The chain has moved up to a 15% share of all relays, with a strong trend going back to December 9th and continuing up until the 19th (before dipping in the last two days of this period). Gnosis - xDai nearly crossed 200 million daily relays during that run, as we could still be seeing increased traffic after the Gnosis merge.We also saw Optimismrelays up 18% this week, with a big start to the period in which the chain cleared 50 million daily relays. After this start, Optimism dipped back to last week’s levels in the last four days of this period, and finished with just over 35 million daily relays.Another week, another strong performance from Ethereum, as relays were up 17%. Even with a dip in the first four days of this period, Ethereum relays jumped in a big way the last three days. During that stretch, daily relays first cleared 500 million, and then moved past 600 million for a new all-time-high for the chain on December 21st! As of writing, we’re seeing Ethereum blow even further past that high, with daily relays currently above 750 million! Will Ethereum be our first chain to post 1 billion daily relays on its own?Finally, we also had DFKchain with 11% relay growth, as it continues a strong multi-week upwards trend. The chain was above 75 million relays in five out of seven days during this period, after not clearing that mark at all last week.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 December 15th through December 21st, Ethereum was able to clear 2M in POKT earnings, now more than double the earnings of any other chains. Ethereum continues to widen the gap over Polygon, with Polygon now clocking in below 1M weekly POKT earnings. Meanwhile, Gnosis - xDai continued to hold the #3 spot, but has moved up much closer behind Polygon.Beyond the Top 3, we saw BSC and DFKchain remain in the #4 and #5 spots respectively.

In terms of average daily relays per node, we saw the following chains make the Top 15 list.

Not surprisingly, Ethereum held down the #1 spot with its continued growth and new all-time-highs. Two other noteworthy chains came from the Polygon ecosystem, as Polygon Archival jumped up 6 spots thanks to more than doubling its weekly relays, while Polygon Mumbai slipped down 6 spots, falling from its temporary run in the #1 spot in recent weeks.Interestingly, Polygon Archival’s relay performance was enough to help the chain make this jump up the rankings even with about 150 more nodes coming on to service the chain, compared to last week. Meanwhile, more than 200 additional nodes also started servicing Polygon Mumbai this week, contributing to the average earnings per node falling. Supply and demand in action!

Node Infrastructure

As of December 21st, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 23,301 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 down 6% from the previous week.Note: PIP-22 and PUP-19 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 incentive structures that have been rolled out in v0.9.0.

Wrap Up

• Ethereum smashes its previous all-time high, with more where that came from following this time frame.
• Polygon Archival moves up the average earnings per node rankings.
• Moonbeam and Moonriver each grow their relays by at least 40%.
• Gnosis - xDai has another strong week, and moves towards the #2 spot.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!