One of the longest-running, most credible, and outright leaders in Ethereum, MyCrypto has added Pocket Network to its default network provider list.This now gives users the option to choose a decentralized Ethereum network provider, alongside Infura, Etherscan, and MyCrypto’s node infra. A value that we both share.Decentralization for the sake of decentralization is not always the best approach, that was so 2017, but in the case of full node infrastructure for public networks like Ethereum, a diverse and distributed node network is paramount to the network’s health and resiliency.If all of Ethereum’s application data is consolidated into a few Web2-like SaaS businesses’ that depend heavily on Cloud monopolies, is it actually decentralized?

Is this decentralization? 🦋 pic.twitter.com/MY2kESJqg1

— Alberto Jauregui | esoteRICK.eth 🧙‍♀️ (@DisruptBanksy) October 29, 2020

To be clear, these services do provide value to their customers and there is no bus to throw them under, we all want Ethereum and other amazing crypto projects to succeed.But because most of us understand the risks of node counts decreasing and centralizing, then Pocket’s solution which provides unparalleled redundancy, resiliency, and censorship-resistance is something that we are happy to push with confidence. It makes us very excited that the team at MyCrypto is aligned here.“Adding Pocket Network to our list of default Ethereum nodes was a no-brainer. One of the key ideals of blockchain is decentralization, and Pocket is a piece that fits into that puzzle perfectly.” said Jordan Spence of MyCrypto.He goes on to say that “The ability for MyCrypto users to add an extra optional, redundant node infrastructure layer of complete and utter decentralization is always something we’ll take seriously. The fact that you guysintroduced it to us with it already working on MyCrypto and an accompanying tutorial for it was really cool for us to show our community! All of that made it super easy for us to commit to adding it as a default node option instead of requiring users to manually add it as a custom node.”

So what does it take to support the sustainable decentralization of Ethereum’s data access?

Literally ONE step:

1. Connect to MyCrypto, or create a new wallet. That’s it!

MyCrypto has a load-balancer in place that determines which node loads for you by default so that way no single node gets too much of a load. Pocket has load-balancing at the protocol-level, too. It distributes the work across the entire network of nodes through a web of sessions, thereby, providing a built-in solution to a node being inundated with traffic as an app would get served by more than one node per session.2. Optional: Go to change network, click Ethereum, then manually select Pocket Network.Welcome to the future of highly-available, redundant, and decentralized node infrastructure!

What happens behind the scenes?

TLDR:

• Pocket developed a gateway that sits on top of the Pocket Network protocol forwarding all the RPC calls to the underlying network. The Pocket Gateway was designed to favor the fastest, highly-performant nodes by actively sorting put bad nodes in a session to ensure high quality of service.
• Instead of funneling through a single node provider or setup, anytime MyCrypto sends data through Pocket Network via the gateway, the protocol relays that data to a randomly selected “session” of 5 nodes. Pocket’s gateway also has an internal load-balancer that lets us dynamically map multiple Application Authentication Tokens (AATs) to a single endpoint, which further allows for an application to be served through multiple sessions, each with 5 nodes.
• Each node serves the requested data back to the client (MyCrypto), which then validates the data via a majority consensus.
• The protocol then mints POKT and issues it to the nodes with valid data.
• A session is set currently at 4 blocks(approximately 1 hour).
• Rinse and Repeat for each session!

Also, anyone competent enough in DevOps and Infrastructure can run a Pocket Node, drive progressive decentralization, and earn POKT because of it. At the time of this post, there are +500 Pocket Nodes in the network. It will continue to grow more resilient and encourage the proliferation of more base layer Ethereum nodes.Support MyCrypto’s optionality and Ethereum’s sustainability by making the switch today. Visit MyCrypto to get started!And Pocket Network was just one part of MyCrypto’s new release. A user can now migrate from $LEND to $AAVE, transfer your v1 $ANT to v2, and check off all our action items 👇If you’d like to earn while doing, consider running a Pocket node yourself by following these docs or with one of these node service providers: Rivet, Skillz, BlockSpaces, or Chainflow. If you are a developer that wants to experiment with a bleeding-edge decentralized blockchain network provider for your app, sign up via our 1M relay waitlist. Spots in our 1,000,000 requests per day free tier are limited, so apply ASAP!