Happy weekend everyone! We’re back with another Relay Recap.This week, we saw steady, incremental growth in total relays day by day, with the period wrapping up by clearing 1 billion daily relays on September 21st. Although Harmony took a dip in relays this week, the overall growth that we saw was due in large part to several other Top 10 chains increasing their relays by anywhere from 10 to 30%. Meanwhile, Polygon stayed steady at the top, matching its 1.9 billion weekly relays from the prior period.Throughout the week, the network serviced an average of909 million daily relays, with the daily high for this time period recorded at 1.05 billion on September 21st.

Overall, 6.4 billion relays were serviced during the week, representing a 5% increase over the 6.1 billion relays the prior week.

Chain Highlights

Moonbeam was a standout this week, as the chain grew its relays by 60%. After spending all of last week and the beginning of this week below 1.5 million daily relays, Moonbeam had a huge jump to more than 3 million relays for the last 3 days of this period. In fact, September 19th was a new all-time-high for the chain, clocking in at 3.3 million relays. Previously, the chain had never cleared 2 million daily relays since being allowlisted.Ethereum has been trending back up since September 13th, and was able to increase its relays by 29% this week. The chain spent most of this week above 100 million daily relays after 0 days above that threshold the prior week. Ethereum finished the week above 120 million, and moved back up from the #5 ranking to the #3 ranking.Optimism also had a strong week, growing relays by 24%. After a dip to begin the period, Optimism increased its relays in each of the last 4 days of this week, as it approached 35 million daily relays. The chain has been trending upwards since September 10th, with its performance this week bumping it up from the #10 spot to the #9 spot.DFKchain was another Top 10 chain with a positive performance this week, increasing its relays by 22%. The chain had a nice uptrend throughout the week, and grew its relays in each of the last 3 days of the period. By the end of the week, DFKchain was closing in on 100 million daily relays, after spending last week around 70 million per day. Like some of the other chains highlighted here, this performance helped DFKchain move up the Top 10 list, from #6 to #5.Speaking of top chains, BSC was also able to increase its relays by 18% this week. After not clearing 110 million daily relays all of last week, BSC surpassed 130 million daily relays during this period. Thanks to steadily increasing relays throughout the week (before taking a slight dip to end the period), BSC was another chain that was able to move up in the rankings, from #3 to #2.Finally, we saw more growth in the Top 5 chains with Gnosis - xDai boosting its relays by 10%. We’ve seen a strong positive trend from this chain over recent weeks, even with a brief dip to start this period. After that dip, Gnosis - xDai climbed towards 115 million daily relays, and spent the last 3 days of the period over 100 million relays per day. With this performance, Gnosis - xDai was able to maintain the #4 spot that it held 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!

New Chain Support

During this timeframe, we officially allowlisted two new chains: StarkNet Mainnet (0060) and StarkNet Testnet (0061).As we shared in last week’s Recap, StarkNet is a permissionless and decentralized ZK-Rollup, which operates as a Layer 2 network on Ethereum. StarkNet enables unlimited scale for dApps, while maintaining Ethereum’s composability and security.Node runners can now service relays for these chains and earn POKT, and developers can get set up with StarkNet endpoints in the Pocket Portal today!

Node Earnings

From September 15th through September 21st, Polygon was the only chain whose nodes earned more than 1 million POKT, putting it significantly ahead of the other Top 3 chains for node earnings. We saw some movement in the Top 3 this week, with BSC moving up from 3rd to 2nd, and Harmony falling off the list to make room for Ethereum.

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

• Polygon
• BSC
• Osmosis
• Ethereum
• Polygon Archival

This list was significantly reshuffled compared to last week, with Polygon being the only chain that remained in the same spot. BSC moved up from 3rd to 2nd thanks to its relay growth, while Polygon Archival dropped from 4th to 5th (although it’s still noteworthy that an archival is staying on this list for the second straight week, as that has been rare in the past). Meanwhile, Harmony and Gnosis - xDai dropped off the list entirely, as Osmosis and Ethereum made an appearance/reappearance this week.Osmosis was a particularly interesting case, as the jump into the Top 5 wasn’t due to relay growth (as is usually the case), but more so because we saw a dip in the number of node runners opting to service this chain in particular (i.e. rewards were spread between less node runners this week).

Node Infrastructure

As of September 21st, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 27,447 active nodes across nearly 30 different countries, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting dozens of different chains.Interestingly, this was the first week since the PIP-22 and PUP-19 -influenced node consolidation that we saw the node count increase, albeit slightly. Node runners are continuing to find a healthy balance between spinning up new nodes and consolidating into larger nodes to take advantage of stake-weighted servicer rewards.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.

Wrap Up

• Moonbeam relays jump 60%, with 3 straight days that blew away the chain’s previous all-time-high in daily relays.
• Ethereum, Optimism, and DFKchain each grow their relays by more than 20%.
• Other Top 10 chains like BSC and Gnosis - xDai also increase relays by more than 10%.
• Osmosis makes an appearance in the Top 5 list for average node earnings.
• StarkNet Mainnet and Testnet are allowlisted.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!