Hello Pocketeers 👋, It’s with great excitement that we bring to you our February Newsletter. - Pokt Network

Hello Pocketeers 👋, It’s with great excitement that we bring to you our February Newsletter. Here is a breakdown of all things Pocket! Pocket Network for the first time achieved 23 Billion application relays in a quarter, settling at nearly 23.5B relays in the last 3 months! February saw a dip of 15.7% in relays compared to January, and this was primarily due to Harmony relays taking a dip. The node infrastructure however continues to grow strongly and stands tall at 33,290 nodes as of the end of February. Pocket Network node infrastructure is now running on more than double the amount of Bitcoin full nodes. Welcome to the future! Welcome to decentralized infrastructure!

📈 Network Heartbeat 🩺

Throughout February, blockchain applications using the Pocket Gateway have driven a total of ~8.1B relays.This is the third month of crossing 5 Billion application relays. We look forward to continuing the same consistent growth for the rest of the year.

As of March 2, 2022,, there are 33,290 staked nodes in Pocket Network.

The below image shows the total number of successful relays per day, week, and month throughout the months of December, January and February.

Most Relays in DECEMBER’21: 218,193,075 (December 29th)Most Relays in JANUARY’22: 357,662,344 (January 29th)Most Relays in FEBRUARY’22: 340,635,094 (February 15th)

🧰 Developer Updates

Nodes per session increase to 24

The Pocket Network protocol autonomously and randomly assigns 5 nodes from the network in a session with an application (or client). In the event a node were to go offline, then the application would still be connected to the other nodes in that session. In the unlikely event that all nodes were to go down, then the app would automatically get paired with another set of 5 random nodes by the protocol through a mechanism called session tumbling.In the recent update, the number of nodes per session was increased to 24 at the protocol level in the approved PUP-10.More nodes means a higher degree of randomization and, by extension, more security.

Pocket Network v1.0 Utility Q&A

After the release of Pocket Network’s v1 specs late last month, a community call in February discussed the utility aspect of the v1 specs. In case you missed the call, there is a recording on youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e3wT5IqFCEThere are future community calls planned. One can join the events below to learn more about Pocket's vision for the future of web3 infrastructure:

Pocket Network v1.0 Persistence Q&A

Validate the state of the engine powering Pocket Network's data storage needs by joining this Q&A with Luis Correa de León, CTO and Co-founder, Pocket Network and Irving Rivas, Communications Chief, Pocket Networkhttps://discord.gg/aTNNF9nw?event=931648127327424573

Pocket Network v1.0 Consensus Q&A

After digging into the hot stuff that is the v1.0 Consensus specification, join this Q&A with Andrew Nguyen, Protocol Lead, Pocket Network and Daniel Olshansky, Protocol Specialist, Pocket Network.https://discord.gg/aTNNF9nw?event=931648352846753832

Pocket Network v1.0 P2P Q&A

If you read over the P2P structure and want to become a leader in v1.0 awareness, push "interested" on this Q&A with Hamza Ouaghad, Protocol Engineer, Pocket Network; Otto Vargas, Blockchain Engineer, Pocket Network and BenVan, Protocol Advisor, Pocket Network.https://discord.gg/aTNNF9nw?event=931648576025681970

Pocket Network whitelists OEC blockchain

Pocket Network partners with OEC, one of the first EVM Blockchains on Cosmos, to Boost Node Infrastructure Decentralization.OEC is a new blockchain powered by OKx, a leading crypto exchange, set to revolutionize the way users can trade assets in a decentralized, permissionless, fast, and cheap way.Until Pocket, EVM protocols like OEC relied upon centralized network providers to fill the gap between applications and blockchain data. Pocket is decentralizing OEC’s full node infrastructure to offer more security and uptime at a fraction of the costs of the current legacy solutions.One can read more details about the partnership here:https://www.blog.pokt.network/oecpartnership/

Community-developed Ecosystem Tools

Node Pilot updates

Node Pilot released another update: v0.11.1. It comes with many fixes, and optimizations.After updating to v0.11.1, go to the main dashboard to update your Harmony and Ethereum nodes.Read the complete update here:https://docs.decentralizedauthority.com/versions#v0.11.1-2022-2-4

Poktscan

Potkscan is implementing a security and reliability product for poktscan. This is critical for the implementation of the NEW poktscan coming in the near future. One may experience limited or no access checking transactions, account balances, and other features of POKTScan.

Governance Updates

There is no active proposal up for a vote as of this writing.The following proposals are under active discussion by community members:

The following proposals were voted on in February:

PUP-11: WAGMI Inflation

Passed ✅:Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pup-11-wagmi-inflation/1369This proposal seeks to control the growing inflation in Pocket Network and bring in the idea of sustainable inflation that protects rewards against a decrease in relays and sensibly reduces rewards as Pocket Network grows. This is one of the most discussed and important proposals related to the Pocket protocol!

PUP-13: Initial WAGMI Parameters

Passed ✅:Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pup-13-initial-wagmi-parameters/2238/45In continuation with PUP-11, this proposal governs the first several parameter changes of WAGMI in a fair and simple means to gradually reduce token incentives over time and bring in sustainable inflation as outlined in the PUP-11 proposal.As a direct result of successfully passing the above proposals, as of 1st March, 2022, the RelaysToTokensMultiplier parameter has now been updated to 0.008461 POKT per relay, in an effort to set network-wide inflation to a target of 100%.As a reminder, the two WAGMI proposals (PUP-11 and PUP-13) were approved by the DAO and will manage inflation according to the following targets:

Mar 26th: 90%
Apr 25th: 80%
May 25th: 70%
Jun 24th: 60%
Jul 24th: 50%

And the RelaysToTokensMultiplier value that achieves these inflation targets (above) will be calculated using:

a 30-day trailing average of daily relays at the time of each adjustment
The total supply at the time of the proposal passing (Feb 24, 2022, 6:37 GMT), which corresponds to block height 51909, which is 945,014,988.719332 POKT. We’ll call this the Total Supply Baseline.

If daily relays change significantly in between the above dates, Pocket Network will make discretionary adjustments to smooth out the reduction of the parameter.This inflation management framework provides nodes with stable rewards on the upside and downside. If daily relays change drastically in either direction, Pocket is no longer at risk of a supply shock.

PIP-10: wPOKT Multi-Sig Signer Selection

Passed ✅:Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pip-10-wpokt-multi-sig-signer-selectionTo operate the wPOKT bridge, Pocket protocol needs a Gnosis Safe 5/7 multi-sig that can mint wPOKT as needed to supply tokens to the liquidity bridges. The proposal invited volunteers to be a signer by responding to the proposal.

PEP-20: Market Making Reimbursement

Passed ✅:Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pep-20-market-making-reimbursement/1751This proposal, put forward by Pocket Network CEO Michael O’Rourke, talks about the expense incurred to provide liquidity for a successful POKT launch on the exchanges last week. The foundation directors deemed that two separate market makers were necessary to ensure a successful POKT market entry across multiple exchanges. As part of doing these deals, the Pocket Network Foundation provided 11M $ from its own treasury to this effort. The Foundation is seeking reimbursement from the DAO for these tokens.

PIP-9: Consensus Rule Change - RC-0.8.0

Passed ✅:Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pip-9-consensus-rule-change-rc-0-8-0/1351The proposal suggests some very important improvements to the Pocket protocol:

Non-custodial Operator address: Currently the private key where the node is running and the private key that has custody over staked POKT tokens are required to be the same. In cases where the community members are working with 3rd party service providers for running nodes, it means providing them full control of their funds. With this upgrade, the custody of the tokens and the rewards generated will remain with the wallet holder while the node can run independently, giving them full control of their POKT.
Removal of Force-Unstake ‘Burn’: If any Pocket Network node falls below the minimum stake (due to slashing) the punishment is burning all of their staked funds. The proposal suggests that if the node falls below the minimum stake of 15,000 POKT, the node will automatically initiate a 21-day unstake. This is a more befitting response to the infraction committed by the node and will put community members at ease knowing their POKT will not be burnt.
Non-Deterministic Invalid Evidence Fix: The evidence handling protocol in Tendermint is non-deterministic and occasionally causes invalid proposals. Historically, this symptom has caused blocks to be tens of minutes late. A patch would be released so there is true determinism in block production.
Handling of ReplayAttack Error: Relay ReplayAttacks are stopped at the protocol level under the ProofTx verification. However, the protocol is specified to punish the attacker proportionally to the probabilistic replays. The functionality though being present in Pocket Core, it is not working as intended. A patch to be released which fixes this bug.

wPOKT update

wPOKT makes significant progress in February. Here is a quick download:

Packet Labs completed the penetration test in early Feb with positive results.
POKT<>ETH has successfully passed two security audits.
In collaboration with Ferrum Network, Pocket Network have defined milestones which include changes to Ferrum Solutions Architecture to support non-EVM compatible networks. Earlier versions of the bridge and staking contract were EVM compatible only. The scope has now been expanded to include a wider range of situations outside of EVM.
Dev teams from Pocket Network & Ferrum Network are working closely together to have more than 1 bridge for wPOKT, and also the possibility to make wPOKT multi-chain in the future. This ensures there are multiple ways to bridge funds, reducing singular points of failure.
In the last week of the month, the POKT<>ETH contract audit has come across some additional challenges which are being reviewed by Pocket’s internal engineering team.
Pocket team will be changing to a monthly cadence for the devlog. This will allow to communicate more meaningful changes on a larger timespan as well as effect change from behind the scenes.

Read the latest devlog here:https://wrapped.pokt.network/dev-log-14

📰 News

Infracon - Pocket Network Community Conference

Pocket Network is very excited to announce the long awaited Infracon, taking place May 20-21,2022 in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.Infracon welcomes Pocket Network’s community members, developers and node runners in all stages of their journey to apply.The event has very limited capability, therefore all applications submitted for an Infracon ticket will go through a selection process.For more details visit :https://www.infracon.org/

Pocket Network powers Gnosis Chain’s Play-To-Earn Game ‘Dark Forest’ Round 5

Pocket Network announced successful service delivery of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) access to the Gnosis Chain (formerly xDAI) for Round 5 of the widely popular real-time strategy blockchain game Dark Forest.With this last round, the Gnosis Chain game drove nearly 60 million relays through Pocket Network’s full node decentralized infrastructure in just the span of a few days.Read more about it here:https://www.blog.pokt.network/pocket-network-powers-gnosis-chains-play-to-earn-game-dark-forest-round-5/

Defi Legends tournament kick started

The #DeFiLegends tournament began this week.

Who’s ready to see what $pokt is about 💪 https://t.co/gVsGLUPjv4

— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) March 2, 2022

What is Pocket Network?

Chain Debrief has a recent Twitter thread explaining the Pocket ecosystem. Read it here:

What Is @POKTnetwork? Web3 Node Infrastructure That Operates As A Decentralised Relay Network$POKT pic.twitter.com/eIdd2ba2bd

— Chain Debrief (@ChainDebrief) February 22, 2022

Be[In]Crypto has a sit-down with Pocket Network

Pocket Network’s Operations lead, Rich Cuellar-Lopez talks about Pocket Network with Be[In]Crypto.Pocket Network, a Web3 infrastructure middleware protocol, provides extensive blockchain bandwidth from a globally-distributed network of over 30,000 full nodes to applications in Web3 across 37 different blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, Avalanche and Harmony.Read in more detail about the discussion here:https://beincrypto.com/industry-no-longer-needs-to-own-infrastructure-for-blockchain-says-pocket-network-ethdenver-2022/

Nodey returns with another insightful chapter

It has been a while since we heard from Nodey. This time Nodey is back to explain one of the most fundamental aspects of $POKT: a relay!Watch it on below link and if there is anything you’d like to learn, leave us a comment on the thread!

It's been a while, hasn't it?

Nodey is back with another explanation - this time explaining one of the most fundamental aspects of $POKT : A relay!Is there anything you'd like to learn? Let us know in the comments below! pic.twitter.com/hWMOhmelne— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) February 23, 2022

MEXC Global does a live AMA with Pocket Network

Earlier this week, MEXC Global organized a live AMA with Michael O’Rourke, CEO and Co-founder, Pocket Network on their telegram channel.

Join us in the conversation with @POKTnetwork $POKT

📍TG group: https://t.co/FwcM9OWyNI⏰21:00 Feb 24 (UTC+8)✅Follow @POKTnetwork & @MEXC_Updates & @MEXC_Fans with screenshots comment✅RT & Like & Tag 3 with #MEXCGlobal✅KYC MEXC Email🌈Attend live AMA for more rewards https://t.co/II9EGPrGS2— MEXC Global (@MEXC_Global) February 23, 2022

Pocket Network deepens ties with FUSE Network

After a remarkable performance in the last two weeks experienced by the FUSE ecosystem after having integrated POKT’s RPC endpoints, Fuse has decided to double down and scale the number of relay requests they send to us.Pocket Network is now supporting 20% of the FUSE RPC relay traffic!Previously, the RPC endpoint had a limit of 3M relays/day, which has now been increased to 84M relays/day. A total of 23,376 Pocket Nodes are servicing these relays.

We've talked a lot about @Fuse_network $FUSE over the last couple days, so here's a quick 🧵 covering all that you need to know about them!

— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) February 24, 2022

One can learn about how to use the FUSE endpoint in this video:

For those who are hearing about our partner $fuse @Fuse_network for the first time, here's a quick explainer video on how to use Fuse with a $POKT -powered endpoint! https://t.co/b7FWexhJqO

— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) February 18, 2022

Pocket Network breaks 30k nodes milestone

Pocket Network now has twice the number of full nodes of Bitcoin. Pocket Network’s innovative incentive structure proves that the full nodes issue that haslong plagued the Bitcoin network can be solved. While Bitcoin has gained 50% more nodes in the last year from 10,000 to current numbers of 15,000, Pocket Network has jumped 3000% from 1,000 to 30,000 nodes. Furthermore, Pocket nodes are capable of providing infrastructure services to not just Bitcoin, but to over 3 dozen other blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and Harmony.

18 months. 2x the size of Bitcoin. $POKT https://t.co/2YDhz6CaJd pic.twitter.com/r2TslraKo2

— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) February 16, 2022

Pocket Network sponsors EthDenver held this month

Pocket Network gave a talk at EthDenver and spoke about the upcoming v1 release. If you missed the talk, you can watch it here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuDDdiMbMQOne can also follow the Twitter thread which summarizes the points from the talk:

Check out this thread or the full video if you missed our talk @EthereumDenver about @POKTnetwork V1 earlier today!https://t.co/AeDLEhg5B2 https://t.co/lptgdxObFD

— Daniel Olshansky | olshansky.eth 🐙 (@olshansky) February 17, 2022

Gate.io does an AMA with Pocket Network

Earlier this week, Gate.io organized an AMA hosted by their BDM Mariela Tanchez and attended by Adam Liposky, COO of Pocket Network.

💥 https://t.co/8kWqgEeplL #AMA Update 💥

📌 The host will be our BDM - @MarielaTanchez and the guest will be the COO of @POKTnetwork - Adam Liposky.🗓️ Date: Tuesday, Feb 10, 13:00 UTC📺 Venue: https://t.co/g88a1gyNYq pic.twitter.com/VgjfRU8zpr— Gate.io (@gate_io) February 9, 2022

Pocket Network attending Synapse Summit 2022

Held in Tampa, FL on February 17th, 2022, Synapse Summit was the place to celebrate, discover and engage everything the Florida innovation community has to offer.Synapse Summit was a 2 day event featuring keynote addresses from Manny Medina, Media Capital; Cathay Hack, CEO & Chief Metaverse Officer, The Futures Intelligence Group, Felecia Hatcher, CEO, Black Ambition & Synapse Innovation Awards and a AMA with Michael O’Rourke, CEO, Pocket Network

With Speakers like Keynote @CathyHackl, @o_rourke of @POKTnetwork & @TheRosaShores of @BlockSpaces_io, #SynapseSummit is the place to be to learn about the newest innovations in #Web3, the #Metaverse, #Crypto, #Blockchain & more! #InnovationLivesHere

🎟️: https://t.co/2j8mlazPFV pic.twitter.com/WcKNMFm16s— Synapse Florida (@SynapseFL) February 8, 2022

Ferrum Network is making progress on multi-chain bridge

Ferrum Network has made major architectural changes to ensure that the bridge is compatible not just with EVM but across blockchains. Read more about it on the dev log released this week:

📣Ferrum is helping with the integration of @POKTnetwork with EVM compatible networks enabling the launch of wPOKT.

💥We have now committed all 77,742.91 POKT received from the Grant to running Nodes for $POKT.More Updates: https://t.co/dqsoO8mXB3 https://t.co/HR9b1m4uc1 pic.twitter.com/WcucxPvzcv— Ferrum Network (ferrum-network.eth) (@FerrumNetwork) February 10, 2022

Pocket Network sponsors #ETHDenver 2022

Are you planning to BUIDL @EthereumDenver? RPC endpoints by Pocket Network can be your gateway to the multi-chain metaverse!Pocket Network has been a regular sponsor of hackathons. Read more about Pocket and it’s similar past endorsements here:https://www.blog.pokt.network/pocket-network-sponsors-ethdenver-2022/

What future do you want to live in?

Michael O’Rourke, Co-founder and CEO, Pocket Network answers this in the video with Okcoin. Find out here:

What future do you want to live in? @o_rourke Founder of the @POKTnetwork knows his answer.

Watch the full OKcoin Live episode here: 👇https://t.co/nPPSPTzPwp pic.twitter.com/95Ssjy6cjf— Okcoin (@Okcoin) February 1, 2022

🐦 Wall of Tweets and Memes

Pocket Network News | FEBRUARY 2022