Relay Recap #106 features 7 new chains being supported for RPC service, 20% relay growth from Optimism and Meter, and a move up the earnings chart from Polygon Archival. This recap covers stats from March 9 - March 15.

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

While relays cooled off a bit this week after recent pushes towards all-time highs, we nevertheless still saw 6 different chains posting double-digit percentage relay growth. Some of the Top 5 chains like Ethereum and Polygon had a dip in traffic compared to recent weeks, but Optimism, Meter, Metis, and FUSE showed strong growth. You can see more info in the Chain Highlights section below.

After a dip towards 1 billion total relays on the 12th, we saw a general trend back upwards over the remainder of the period.

From a distribution standpoint, we saw Polygon shed some of its share of total relays, dropping below the 30% mark and coming in closer to Ethereum around the mid 20s.

Lastly, we had a ton of action in new chain support this week - more info in the next section!

Throughout this period, the network serviced an average of 1.119 billion daily relays. The daily high for this time period was recorded at 1.22 billion on March 11th.

Overall, 7.83 billion relays were serviced during the week. This was a 13% decrease from the 8.95 billion relays the prior week.

New Chain Support Expands Pocket's RPC Service

It was a big week for new chain support, as we allowlisted 3 new chains for RPC service, and are making preparations to add another 4 next week.

The newly allowlisted chains are:

• Celo Mainnet (0065)
• Velas Mainnet (0067)
• Velas Mainnet Archival (0068)

Node runners can now serve relays to these chains and earn POKT for their RPC service! Celo in particular has come out of the gates quickly, already posting multiple days with around 2 million relays.

As always, DO NOT add the RelayChainID to your Pocket Node stake until you've ensured that your nodes are working correctly.

For next week, we are targeting:

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

With these upcoming chains, node runners can get ahead of the game by making preparations to deploy their node, getting up to sync, and simulating relays to ensure that everything is working correctly.

See All of Pocket Network's Supported Chains

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!

ETH Archival Trace ↗️ 35%

🦾 15,487 nodes servicing

📡 245 average daily relays per node

Optimism ↗️ 22%

🦾 13,990 nodes servicing

📡 1,165 average daily relays per node

Meter ↗️ 21%

🦾 41 nodes servicing

📡 2,693 average daily relays per node

Metis ↗️ 17%

🦾 1,455 nodes servicing

📡 205 average daily relays per node

Ethereum Ropsten ↗️ 12%

🦾 131 nodes servicing

📡 686 average daily relays per node

FUSE Mainnet ↗️ 12%

🦾 20,561 nodes servicing

📡 1,242 average daily relays per node

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Node Earnings

From March 9th through March 15th, the story with POKT earnings stayed largely the same as recent weeks. Ethereum continues to be a close second to Polygon in terms of total POKT earnings, while Gnosis - xDai remains in a distant third.

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

Although there was some minor shuffling in the Top 5, we didn't see too many big movers this week. Most notable was Polygon Archival, moving up 7 spots to grab a position on this list. Although relays were almost exactly flat for the chain week-over-week, there were less node runners servicing the chain this period, so the average earnings per node saw an increase.

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Node Infrastructure

As of March 15th, Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure included 21,005 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 down about 0.9% 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

• Relays pull back from recent pushes towards all-time highs.
• 3 new chains are allowlisted for RPC service, with 4 more coming next week.
• Optimism and Meter are standouts, with more than 20% relay growth.
• Polygon Archival moves up 7 spots to claim a position on the Top 15 chains for average daily POKT per node.

Thank you for reading!