Over the last week (09/16 to 09/22), the Pocket Network protocol has successfully relayed over 198.1M application requests and settled at 6,443 nodes.

Weekly Relay Recap & Analysis 👋

The third week of September came to an end, and with that, it’s time for WRR40. This week perfectly reflects the steady growth we’re enjoying, both in the number of relays and in the number of active validator nodes.We now count 699 more active validator nodes compared to last week, a solid increase of 12.1% in a single week! Whereas the number of total relays almost touched the 200M mark again.

The chart above perfectly shows the healthy uptrend I was talking about. Looking at the past four weeks, the Pocket Network successfully processed over a quarter billion relays in a single month (802.8M!). A major accomplishment, which could soon be beaten by the actual magic number of 1 billion relays processed in a single month.Fun fact: On March 17th, 2021, we celebrated the Pocket Network hitting 1B total relays. About 8 months after mainnet launched. We have served over 2.5B relays since the genesis on decentralized infrastructure!!!

The pie chart below shows the distribution of all POKT (rewards) minted this past week.

Remember last week’s POKTscan chart for relays by chain? Some interesting developments are happening there, as the number of relays on xDAI have increased a fair bit this past week and steadily climbs up to possibly soon exceed the number of relays on FUSE. We’ll keep an eye out on these developments throughout the next couple of weeks.

* Green: Ethereum Network, purple: FUSE, light green: xDAI.

Updates

Pocket Node Pilot Updatev0.7.4 of the Node Pilot is now available! Note: this is a mandatory update, especially for Avalanche node runners.Added:

• Reveal private key functionality
• Pocket Mainnet simulate relay toggle

Updated:

• Improved restart node process
• Passphrase errors fixed
• Update Avalanche to x1.6.0

v0.7.4 is now available!

This is a mandatory update, especially for @avalancheavax node runners.✅ Avalanche v1.6.0✅ Other useful features and updatesInstructions below 👇https://t.co/s28Sras6ur— Node Pilot (@nodepilot) September 24, 2021

Pocket Portal UpgradesHave you spotted the updated version of the POKTportal yet? The portal now counts various new features and upgrades, outlined in this thread:

The #POKTportal has received some serious upgrades and new features 🧬

For starters, @cryptoyizus added a Quality of Life improvement as a new metrics UI for developers to monitor the "Usage by Origin" of their endpoint! pic.twitter.com/E3dTkaDpRI— Pocket Network (@POKTnetwork) September 21, 2021

Interested in setting up an RPC endpoint yourself? Or simply interested in learning more about the Pocket Portal? Navigate here.As a reminder, developers receive 1M free relays per day on any (supported) blockchain!How can this be free? Well, the Pocket Network provides bandwidth to decentralized applications that stake POKT. For the Pocket Portal's free tier, the Pocket Network Foundation has pre-staked POKT on behalf of anyone who signs up for up to 1M relays per day!Governance ParticipationAs an application developer or node operator, you’ve surely seen various proposals come by so far. While there’s currently no active (or upcoming) proposals, we’d encourage you to participate in these discussions and provide input to help shape the future of decentralized web3.0 infra.By submitting proof of hard work you can work your way up the ladder!Learn more at https://docs.pokt.network/home/paths/governor/claim-your-voteMonthly Community CallSpeaking about participating, we’d love to have you tune in at our upcoming monthly community call!The next call is scheduled for Next week. October, 1st, 12:00PM EDT.We’ll be discussing a range of topics, if there’s any topic you’d like to see discussed, please contact @Jackal. To join the call, RSVP on Discord!

Blockchain Whitelist Preparations

We are making preparations to whitelist Harmony Shard 0 (0040) and Harmony Shard 0 Archival (0A40) in ~1.5 weeks on October 6th, 2021.We advise node runners who wish to support these chains to 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.We would also like to address the fact that the Harmony chain represents 4 chainIds for each Mainnet and archival. As a note to Node Runners, we want to make sure that it is clear to all that requests will be received only on Harmony Shard 0 (0040) and Harmony Shard 0 Archival (0A40), hence why they are being whitelisted.If you stake for the other shards you won’t receive any traffic or revenue from them.DO NOT add the RelayChainIDs to your pocket node stake until you have ensured your nodes are working correctly, otherwise your Pocket node will be slashed.If you need any support, please join us on Discord in the #node-runner channel.

News

Avalanche’s default RPC down, Pocket’s RPC remains onlineYesterday, Avalanche experienced some hiccups during which their default RPC went down.Now that Avalanche is supported by Pocket Network, users had a safe option to switch to which remained fully functional.Convinced to switch over? Watch this video to learn how:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SNGe2tfmmwFuse announces token swap with Pocket broadening access to full-node infraIn a major boost for the decentralization and robustness of the network, Fuse Network has announced a token swap between its native token FUSE and Pocket Network’s POKT token.The goal of the swap is to allow Fuse Foundation to stake POKT on behalf of the Fuse ecosystem to ensure the widest possible access to the decentralized transaction relay network for projects, communities, and developers building on top of Fuse.Read more here:

MCON event in DenverPocket Network was one of the proud sponsors of the MCON event in Denver last week.Visitors experienced MCON as a true community event, with a shared passion for DAOs and community-first companies and projects. The event was full of DAO talks, workshops, services and philosophy.

Grattitude to MCON's sponsors for helping make the event possible by being once again early supporters:@1kxnetwork @DontBuyMeme @1HiveOrg @0xPolygon @gitcoin @DAOSquare @dao_nf @MetaFam @SpankChain @voteWithTally @POKTnetwork @opolis @RaidGuild @nowdaoit

— pet3rpan (@pet3rpan_) September 12, 2021

What can you do to drive relays and add nodes to the network?Apps and App users.If you care about privacy and decentralization, replace the default network provider in your MetaMask wallet with actual decentralized node infrastructure by adding a Pocket-powered RPC endpoints for Ethereum, Avalanche, xDAI, Fuse, and/or Polygon through the custom rpc settings!Try out any of these other apps listed in the Conscious Dappitalism page within our new docs .You can also earn a skill-role in our Discord community server for dogfooding any of those applications by completing a quest within the POKT arcade.NodesDon’t know how to run a node? Check out the Node Runner docs above to learn how.Try out Node Pilot, it’s the most user-friendly option to spin up both base layer blockchain nodes and Pocket nodes.If you run into any issues, a community of node runners (and our support team) would be happy to help. If you’d prefer to not run a node yourself, check out the forum for a list of node providers offering their services to people interested in participating in the ecosystem.

How to purchase POKT to stake?

When you are ready to take the step forward in supporting decentralized node infrastructure and earning Pocket’s native cryptocurrency for serving apps then visit any of these community-established OTCs:https://forum.pokt.network/t/secondary-markets-for-pokt/629They are the best way to buy or sell POKT; and it helps nodes cover the cost of their infrastructure. Join either private telegram channels (requires telegram) and message the admin to get started. Note that there are fees associated with the OTCs to help cover their costs and that neither Pocket Network, Inc., the Pocket DAO, nor the Pocket Foundation receives any of these fees nor any proceeds from the sale of POKT through the OTCs.