Pocket Network has several programs to boost collaboration between community members, from a forum with community-driven proposals for improving the ecosystem to a newly proposed bounty program. At the same time, Pocket also taps into other ecosystems, pursuing grants with popular projects to support them and enable applications to receive blockchain data at scale. Discover how to contribute to Pocket and the projects that support our network.

The Pocket DAO: The Gateway for Governance

Pocket has a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, the Pocket DAO, that plays a large role in its protocol, economics, and direction. Pocket believes in widespread, equitable, and decentralized contribution to our ecosystem. A DAO is one of the best ways to reach more people, offer them a stake in the evolution of our protocol, and generate win-win scenarios.Currently, there are four paths to earning a vote with the Pocket DAO:

• App Developers
• Node Runners
• Community Shepherds
• Governors/Contributors

Each path is dependent on the completion of a series of tasks in order to earn a vote in the Pocket DAO, ranging from engaging with Pocket through social media to more challenging projects such as completing a series of bounties, depending on the path you choose.

Using Proposals to Improve the Ecosystem

At Pocket, community contributions can range from shaping the protocol’s economics, to improving the rewards and incentives for participants in the ecosystem, and much more.Participation in the Pocket Forum is open to everyone who wants to contribute and improve the protocol - not just DAO voters. Community members can propose projects, ask for funds and reimbursements from the Pocket DAO, weigh in with comments, and play a part in executing approved proposals with the appropriate parameters, benefiting everyone in the ecosystem.There are three main ways to propose projects:

• PIP: Pocket Improvement Proposal
• PEP: Pocket Ecosystem Proposal
• PUP: Parameter Update Proposal

Additionally, you can submit an RFP (a Request for Proposal), signaling a need you may want to see discussed in more detail by the community or solved in collaboration.A PIP may follow an RFP; this type of proposal aims to shape the direction of the Pocket protocol and the governance of the DAO. In a similar direction are PUPs, proposals to modify specific protocol parameters.Many PUPs - PUP-11, 12, 13, and 21, for example - have been approved, clearing the way for specific adjustments to certain protocol parameters and proving that this mechanism is one of the highest-impact ways to contribute.Meanwhile, with PEPs, contributors can ask for funds for different projects, from initial funding all the way through to reimbursements for already-completed work.These main types of proposals aren’t the only paths to contributing, though. You can also submit a pull request (PR) and become an active Pocket contributor in GitHub, getting more involved with the upcoming V1 upgrade, for example, which is set to give Pocket more quality of service, scale, and efficiency. If you’re a student or a researcher, Pocket also provides scholarships to fund new ideas around Web3.Finally, we've also recently published two forum proposals that outline a plan for a more formal suggestions board and bounty program:

• PEP-41: IDentify Efficiencies And Suggestions (IDEAS)
• PEP-42: Reward and Decentralize (RAD)

PEP-41: IDEAS creates a modest seed fund for Pocket Network, Inc.’s team to experiment with incentivizing community members to provide streamlined feedback in a public Suggestions Board, where fellow community members can upvote or downvote suggestions. The most actionable suggestions that influence the direction of PNI’s work will be rewarded with a discretionary amount of $POKT.Simultaneously, we are proposing PEP-42: RAD for the Pocket DAOs consideration, which requests 600,000 $POKT from the Pocket DAO to incentivize the community to contribute to Pocket Network’s growth by supporting key projects such as V1 development, community management, marketing, and more.Stay tuned for updates on these proposals and what they mean for contributors!

Grants: From Aave to Evmos, Pocket is Strengthening Web3 Infrastructure

Pocket also reaches out to other crypto communities to spark collaboration and increase the awareness of decentralized Web3 infrastructure.For example, Pocket received a grant from Aave, one of the top DeFi protocols, to enable RPC service for Aave and boost their scalability, resilience, and uptime. With this grant, Pocket Network received funds to stake POKT on behalf of Aave DAO, enabling up to 25 million relays per day in the ecosystem and improving Aave’s public-facing RPC infrastructure.With Pocket, protocols like Aave can optimize their Web3 infrastructure, tap into a global network of nearly 30,000 nodes, and improve latency and uptime.Pocket also helped supercharge the Evmos ecosystem by pursuing a grant from the Evmos DAO, enabling support for DApps to access data.The Evmos community passed the proposal, and allocated $50,000 to Pocket to stake on behalf of the Evmos DAO and receive up to 50 million daily RPC calls on the public endpoint.Beyond the public endpoint, developers in the Evmos ecosystem can also mint their own secure endpoints in the Pocket Portal, and enjoy a fast, secure, and resilient solution for their RPC needs.Are you an active member of another blockchain ecosystem that is looking to address similar infrastructure needs? Reach out to Pocket for collaboration opportunities.