Today, we’re thrilled to officially announce that Pocket Network has achieved an incredible milestone - 1 billion relays serviced in a single day! The huge growth in relays since Pocket Network’s inception is both a proud moment for us in the present, as well as an exciting sign of things to come. It’s also an opportunity to thank all the members of our community who are joining us on this journey - the developers, the node runners, the application end-users, those participating in governance, our exchange partners, investors, and more.

So just how big of a number is 1 billion? We’ve been thinking about ways to wrap our heads around it: here’s a fun fact. If you were to count to 1 billion, giving yourself an average of 3 seconds to say each number out loud, it would take you more than 95 years to finish the count!We’re very happy that our network can service 1 billion relays much, much faster than we can count them…(Data sources: poktscan.com and c0d3r.org)

How We Got Here

To put things into perspective a bit more, towards the end of March 2021, Pocket Network was servicing about 2 million relays per day. At that daily rate, it would take 500 days to reach 1 billion total relays.Fast forward to New Year’s Day 2022, and suddenly the network was servicing about 200 million relays per day: 100x relay growth in less than a year’s time, and only 5 days to reach 1 billion total relays at that daily rate.Now, just 5 months after New Year's Day, we’ve seen another 5x growth in daily relays and are servicing 1 billion relays in 24 hours.Here are some of the key reasons we’ve arrived at this point.New blockchains are consistently being supported. Of course, critical to the growth of daily relays (and Pocket Network’s mission in general) is the number of blockchains that we provide infrastructure support for. As of now, Pocket Network supports nearly 50 revenue-generating chains. This includes seven different chains that are now generating daily relays in the double-digit millions:

• Polygon Mainnet
• Gnosis - xDai
• Harmony Shard 0
• Fantom
• Ethereum
• FUSE Mainnet
• BSC Mainnet

As we called out in our April Relay Recap, supporting all of these chains has allowed Pocket Network to bring more diversity to its pool of relays, rather than nodes being overly reliant on any one chain for revenue generation.

Ease of access. Using the Pocket Portal to tap into Pocket’s decentralized infrastructure, developers can get access to endpoints in just a few clicks, allowing them to query data and send transactions, track usage and uptime metrics, and receive notifications and alerts related to their applications.This ease of access for developers has been a huge part of taking our daily relays to the 1 billion milestone, and will play a critical role in Pocket Network’s evolution towards the next set of milestones.(Note: We have a step-by-step App Developer Setup Guide that provides a detailed walkthrough on getting up and running via the Portal.)Global node infrastructure. Unlike centralized infrastructure alternatives, Pocket Network offers a truly decentralized, global network of nodes to service 1 billion relays per day, with the capability for many, many more. Right at this moment, Pocket Network validator nodes are running all over the planet (in about 30 different countries), offering a Web3 infrastructure alternative that is vastly improved in terms of uptime and resiliency. This level of decentralization and reliability encourages network adoption and in turn has been a huge factor in reaching 1 billion daily relays.The critical, pervasive role of decentralized infrastructure across Web3. As we see from the number of supported chains, Pocket Network’s positioning as a critical infrastructure provider cuts across the entire Web3 space. Whether it be DeFi, gaming, wallet applications, or other types of Web3 offerings, all different kinds of innovative blockchains and apps can benefit from the improved uptime, resiliency, security, and performance that Pocket Network’s truly decentralized full node infrastructure can provide. It’s a service that brings constant value, regardless of market conditions, and this broad applicability and addressable market is another major factor that has contributed to the billion relay milestone.

Where We’re Going

We’ve been looking forward to sharing this moment with you, but there’s no stopping now! Here are just a couple of things we’ve got coming for the future of Pocket Network and its continued relay growth.Infracon: Pocket Network’s Community Conference in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, May 20-21. This inaugural event is right around the corner, and will bring together Pocket Network’s core team and community members for learning, innovating, community-building, and more. We’ll have inspiring keynotes, sessions, and peer-led workshops to share our vision and plan for the future of Pocket Network and decentralized Web3 infrastructure. You can check out our Twitch channel during Infracon to catch our live-streamed keynote sessions!The Triforce Initiative’s focus on supporting new chains and growing relays. As we touched on in our April Relay Recap, Triforce will be yet another highly effective way that Pocket Network will be able to continue growing. The initiative will leverage both internal Pocket Network team members AND community members, and will allow us to launch, maintain, and grow blockchain-specific traffic even more efficiently. If you haven’t already, remember to check out our quick “May the Triforce Be With You” thread and our recent community call for more details on the initiative.v1.0 will help Pocket Network achieve its true vision and mission. Pocket Network aims to provide unstoppable Web3 infrastructure with massive growth in relays and nodes from our current position. The v1.0 network upgrade will play an instrumental role in helping us achieve this vision. Rather than relying on Tendermint’s capabilities, v1.0 will allow us to build our own stack from the ground up, completely optimized for our exact purposes. This evolution of the network will bring important changes in terms of four “modules”: Utility, Consensus, Peer to Peer communication, and Persistence. You can learn more about the changes that will be coming to Pocket Network, including each of the above modules, via our v1.0 Overview.Thank you again for joining us on this journey, and for celebrating this 1 billion daily relay milestone with us!