Relay Recap #107 features Pocket nodes handling a spike in Arbitrum One RPC traffic, Ethereum reclaiming the #1 spot with more than 2 billion relays, and 15 chains growing relays by more than 10%. This recap covers stats from March 16 - March 22.

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

Arbitrum One Takes the Spotlight

The big story during this period was Arbitrum One, as we saw Pocket nodes step up to handle a more than 100% increase in traffic from the chain ahead of its airdrop. As we've seen in the last couple of days, this was only the beginning of the surge in Arbitrum One relays being serviced by Pocket.

As our friends at Pocket News noted, we saw a 10-20x increase in Arbitrum One relays yesterday, on the day of the actual airdrop. Our decentralized network of more than 20,000 nodes was there throughout the day to service RPC traffic reliably, even while other services struggled, showcasing the importance of  resilient infrastructure during big events like this.

https://twitter.com/PoktNews/status/1639215954721751041

For anyone still looking to customize their Arbitrum One RPC and find a more reliable solution, you can get set up in minutes in the Pocket Portal now.

Mint Your Own RPC Endpoint for Arbitrum One

Ethereum Highlights Diverse Relay Growth Across Supported Blockchains

Beyond Arbitrum One, a strong week from Ethereum (relays up 16%) helped to balance out a dip from Polygon traffic and bring overall relay growth to the network. This 16% growth in relays took Ethereum all the way up to 2.2 billion relays for the week. At the time of writing, Ethereum has now passed Polygon to reclaim the #1 spot for most relays.

It was also another week in which we had more than 10 chains posting double-digit percentage growth in relays, highlighting the diversity of Pocket's supported chains. Osmosis, Swimmer, and OEC were some of the standouts, with each posting more than 50% relay growth.

Lastly, we also had several interesting moves in the Top 15 chains for Average Daily Relays Per Node, including some shuffling at the top and several newly supported chains making it on the list. More on that below!

Throughout this period, the network serviced an average of 1.157 billion daily relays. The daily high for this time period was recorded at 1.26 billion on March 20th.

Overall, 8.1 billion relays were serviced during the week. This was a 3% increase from the 7.8 billion relays the prior week.

New Chain Support Expands Pocket's RPC Service

It was another busy week for new chain support, as we allowlisted 4 new chains for RPC service:

• Oasys Mainnet (0070)
• Oasys Archival (0069)
• Kava Mainnet (0071)
• Kava Archival (0072)

Node runners can now serve relays to these chains and earn POKT for their RPC service! As always, DO NOT add the RelayChainID to your Pocket Node stake until you've ensured that your nodes are working correctly.

If you're looking for your own private RPC endpoint for any of these chains, you can get set up in minutes in the Pocket Portal.

See All of Pocket Network's Supported Chains

Chain Highlights: Growth in Arbitrum One RPC Traffic Leads the Way

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!

Arbitrum One ↗️ 126%

🦾 302 nodes servicing

📡 7,592 average daily relays per node

Mint Your Own RPC Endpoint for Arbitrum One

Polygon Archival ↗️ 118%

🦾 344 nodes servicing

📡 2,025 average daily relays per node

Osmosis ↗️ 99%

🦾 302 nodes servicing

📡 235 average daily relays per node

Swimmer ↗️ 71%

🦾 3,186 nodes servicing

📡 886 average daily relays per node

OEC ↗️ 57%

🦾 2,382 nodes servicing

📡 1,337 average daily relays per node

DFKchain ↗️ 41%

🦾 20,406 nodes servicing

📡 7,145 average daily relays per node

Polygon Mumbai ↗️ 35%

🦾 433 nodes servicing

📡 3,587 average daily relays per node

NEAR ↗️ 34%

🦾 187 nodes servicing

📡 778 average daily relays per node

Fantom ↗️ 34%

🦾 20,294 nodes servicing

📡 2,858 average daily relays per node

ETH Archival Trace ↗️ 23%

🦾 15,465 nodes servicing

📡 301 average daily relays per node

Boba ↗️ 21%

🦾 3,719 nodes servicing

📡 1,116 average daily relays per node

Gnosis - xDAI Archival ↗️ 20%

🦾 2,668 nodes servicing

📡 318 average daily relays per node

Ethereum ↗️ 16%

🦾 20,973 nodes servicing

📡 15,049 average daily relays per node

Mint Your Own RPC Endpoint for Ethereum

Meter ↗️ 14%

🦾 45 nodes servicing

📡 2,833 average daily relays per node

Moonriver ↗️ 11%

🦾 3,943 nodes servicing

📡 815 average daily relays per node

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Node Earnings

From March 16th through March 22nd, we saw a total reshuffling of the Top 3 rankings for total POKT earnings. Ethereum supplanted Polygon for the #1 spot, while DFKchain moved ahead of Gnosis - xDAI to claim the third spot.

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

Just as we saw with total relays, Ethereum was also able to swap spots with Polygon and claim the #1 position for this metric.

The surge from Arbitrum One also moved the chain 1 more spot up the Top 5, as it continues to be a strong source of relays since being supported by Pocket. With the spike towards 20 million relays immediately following the period covered in this Relay Recap, we expect Arbitrum One to continue to hold a strong spot on this chart next week too.

Lastly, we also saw several recently supported chains make the Top 15 (Celo, Oasys Mainnet, and Oasys Archival). Being newly allowlisted chains, the number of nodes supporting these networks is in the hundreds rather than thousands at the moment, so we will watch to see how supply and demand continues to impact the per node earnings for these chains as other node runners get in the mix.

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Node Infrastructure

As of March 22nd, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 21,066 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 0.29% from the previous week.

Note: PIP-22 and PUP-19 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 incentive structures that were rolled out in v0.9.0.

Wrap Up

• Pocket nodes service a more than 2x increase in Arbitrum One RPC traffic, with another huge spike (related to the airdrop) coming right after the close of this period.
• A strong week from Ethereum moves the chain back into the #1 spot, ahead of Polygon.
• Newly supported chains find their way into the Top 15 for average daily relays per node.
• 15 different chains grow their relays by more than 10%.

Thank you for reading!