Relay Recap #112 features a fresh new ATH for Pocket Network relays, a big jump from Ethereum Archival, Fantom clearing 50% relay growth, and a big move from Metis up the earnings rankings. This recap covers stats from April 20 - April 26.

Happy Friday! We're back with another Relay Recap.

We have a new all-time high to commemorate this week! On April 21st, we saw a surge to 1.437 billion daily relays, leaving the previous high of 1.404 billion on October 23rd, 2022, in the rear view mirror. Here's to more all-time highs ahead for Pocket Network 🥂

As we take a peek at the Top 10 chains, BSC lost a bit of ground this week, shedding two percentage points in terms of its share of total relays. Optimism, FUSE, and Gnosis - xDai were the ones that stepped up to scoop up that share, each growing their share of relays by one percent with their impressive performances this week. Meanwhile, Ethereum and Polygon relays held steady in the #1 and #2 spots, keeping things almost exactly flat at the top.

Throughout the week, we saw mostly very consistent performance overall, with daily relays hovering between 1.2 to 1.3 billion, only briefly interrupted by the jump upwards and the new all-time high on the 21st.

We saw an archival set the pace again this week (just like Polygon Archival last week), with Ethereum Archival relays growing by 76% and leading all chains. This growth came from a massive spike on the 26th, as relays leaped from around 1.5 million the day prior all the way up to 15 million.

Beyond Ethereum Archival, Fantom was the lone chain to clear the 50% mark in relay gains, but we saw six other chains growing relays by between 10% and 40%.

Throughout this period, the network serviced an average of 1.27 billion daily relays. The daily high for this time period was recorded at 1.437 billion (a new all-time high) on April 21st.

Overall, 8.9 billion relays were serviced during the week. This was a 1% increase from the 8.8 billion relays the prior week.

New Chain Support Coming

We've got two more allowlists coming your way!

• Scroll Testnet (scroll-testnet 0075) on April 30
• Sui Mainnet (sui-mainnet 0076) on May 3

As always, node runners who wish to support these chains can begin making their own preparations by deploying their own nodes, getting up to sync, and simulating relays to ensure that everything is working as intended. DO NOT add the new chain to your Pocket Node stake until you have ensured your new chain node is working correctly; otherwise your Pocket Node will be slashed.

You can also check the docs for each chain to get up to speed:

• Scroll Testnet docs
• Sui docs (stay tuned for updates on running mainnet)

Chain Highlights

Below are some of the chains with the top week-over-week relay growth.

The green percentages show total weekly relay growth, while the charts show the two-week trend in relays per node. Images courtesy of POKTscan!

Ethereum Archival ↗️ 76%

🦾 9,382 nodes servicing

📡 370 average daily relays per node

Fantom ↗️ 57%

🦾 20,156 nodes servicing

📡 1,211 average daily relays per node

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Arbitrum One ↗️ 39%

🦾 6,797 nodes servicing

📡 1,177 average daily relays per node

Mint Your Own Arbitrum One Endpoint

Optimism ↗️ 37%

🦾 13,707 nodes servicing

📡 2,949 average daily relays per node

Mint Your Own Optimism Endpoint

NEAR ↗️ 25%

🦾 721 nodes servicing

📡 1,188 average daily relays per node

OEC ↗️ 24%

🦾 3,196 nodes servicing

📡 1,195 average daily relays per node

Swimmer ↗️ 20%

🦾 1,963 nodes servicing

📡 437 average daily relays per node

FUSE Mainnet ↗️ 15%

🦾 20,222 nodes servicing

📡 1,580 average daily relays per node

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Node Earnings

From April 20th through April 26th, we once again had no change in the Top 3 rankings for total node earnings, with the gaps between Ethereum, Polygon, and DFKchain staying fairly close as well (although DFKchain tightened up the gap just a bit on Polygon).

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

Near the top, we saw Polygon Archival's multi-week run of out-earning Polygon Mainnet come to an end, as Mainnet pulled back into the #2 spot.

The biggest move went to Metis, despite the fact that relays on the chain were actually down about 3% this week. Metis was able to fly up to the edge of the Top 5 due to a large number of nodes rolling off the chain and opting to service other chains. While Metis had more than 450 nodes servicing the chain last week, a large chunk rolled off around the beginning of this period, and the chain now sits with about 150 nodes servicing it. In other words, roughly the same amount of POKT (as relays were nearly flat), divided among far fewer nodes.

It was the same story with Osmosis, which also had a decent-sized move up four spots. While relays were down for the week, the number of nodes servicing the chain went from about 275 last week to around 150 currently.

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Node Infrastructure

As of April 26th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 20,938 active nodes across more than 25 different countries, allowing the network to provide constant uptime and resiliency while supporting dozens of different chains.

This total node count was up about 0.78% from the previous week.

Wrap Up

• A new all-time high in daily relays on Pocket Network!
• Support coming for Scroll Testnet and Sui Mainnet
• Ethereum Archival sets the pace with a 76% increase in relays.
• Fantom clears 50% relay gains.
• Metis makes a big move up the earnings per node rankings.