After sticking around in Punta Cana for some extra time with the team, much of the Pocket Network crew is returning home now. With this past weekend’s Infracon officially in the books, we can’t thank our community enough for helping us make the inaugural event a success. Each session and panel offered insights into the state of Pocket Network and where our journey will be taking us in the future, and the Q&A from the community sparked some great additional conversations with the speakers.Here are some highlights that stood out from Day 2 in particular.

Decentralizing Infrastructure Together

In “Infrastructure is the Most Important Layer of Web3 to Decentralize,” Josh Neuroth of Ankr dug in to Ankr and Pocket’s relationship, and the ways in which our protocols will be able to “win together.” By leveraging Pocket Network nodes to help power Ankr’s protocol, more traffic for Ankr will mean more relays for Pocket nodes - a mutual benefit for both teams. Collaboration between Ankr and Pocket will bring improvements in several areas:

• Node distribution
• Latency
• Node update processes and DevOps diversity, leading to improved reliability
• Ability to submit joint proposals together

We can speak on Ankr’s behalf and say we are both excited about what the future of this collaboration will bring!

Pocket DAO Update

In “The Future of Pocket Network’s Governance,” Jack Laing (Chief Governance Officer with Pocket), laid out many of the guiding principles that are steering the Pocket DAO strategy. Jack referred to a “Lean Trias Politica” (lean separation of powers) model that describes ideal operations of the DAO now and in the future.Using legislative, executive, and judiciary models, the Pocket DAO can be thought of in terms of:

• Off-Chain Legislative: A Citizen’s Democracy. Engaged participants interact without stakeholder biases.
• Minimal Executive: A DAO-Controlled, Ownerless Foundation. The DAO controls rights to the assets owned by the Foundation, and supervisors ensure director compliance as needed.
• On-Chain Judiciary: Validator Override. Validators are ultimate arbiters of whether transactions are accepted into finality.

Jack also dug into different ways to enfranchise the “citizens” in the legislative aspect, including managing the friction of claiming a vote, striving for demographic balance, encouraging active participation, and automating verification processes (with a particular shout-out to ecosystem builders).

What is Thunderhead Building?

In “Storm Watch: The History and Future of Thunderhead,” Addison Spiegel and Pierre Spiegel gave a number of updates on some of the tools and projects that they are working on to help evolve the Pocket Network ecosystem.Among those projects are:

• Continued growth of ThunderStake and ThunderPOKT
• The ThunderFoundation, focusing on formal ecosystem contributions, node running tooling, and analytics
• ThunderTools, which will be used to help node runners, improve network quality of service, and provide analytics and a map of latency stats
• A latency dashboard, to provide additional transparency and quality of service
• Thunfera, providing additional gateways for relays
• V0 optimizations to target improved node running margins

These and all the other efforts from Thunderhead will continue to push Pocket Network’s ecosystem into new territory.

Pocket Network Economics

Last, but certainly not least, Infracon wrapped up with the “Evolving the Economics of Pocket Network” panel, moderated by Chris “Jinx” Jenkins and featuring several panelists from Pocket’s core team and the community.As mentioned by Pocket Network CEO and co-founder Michael O’Rourke, fundamentals remain the most important part of Pocket Network. The panelists discussed a focus on node sustainability and finding ways to optimize for efficiency, while exploring the best paths forward for monetizing relays. Like Michael said during the discussion - keep an eye out for key proposals on these topics in the near future. As always, community participation is critical with important proposals. Make sure to share your thoughts and ideas in the Forum, and engage in the governance process as conversations evolve!Again, thanks so much to everyone that attended Infracon in Punta Cana or followed along with our updates from afar! We were thrilled to share the past weekend with you, and couldn’t be more excited about the future of Pocket Network!