Over the last week (12/16-12/22) the Pocket Network protocol successfully relayed over 1.33 Billion application requests (down by 5%) & the number of staked nodes increased further to 16.7k nodes (up by 7%) when compared to last week!

Weekly Relay Recap & Analysis 👋

Relays were consistent this week with Harmony, Ethereum, FUSE, & Polygon leading the charge. What do you think the lineup will be like next week? Share your thoughts on Twitter!Pocket Network’s growing infrastructure becomes more robust every week as more node runners join the network. Node count continues to trend upwards; once again, adding more than 1500 nodes compared to last week.In the previous Weekly Relay Recap, we saw a 25% jump in relays and a 7% increase in nodes and an all-time high of 216M relays.

The average daily relays were almost similar to last week at around 189M relays.Over 4.49B relays have been processed in total throughout the last four weeks. The exact figures are displayed in the table below.

For those interested in diving deeper into the metrics, one can find them on C0D3R’s Pocket Network charts.The pie chart below shows the distribution of all POKT rewards minted over the past week between the service nodes, block producers, and the Pocket DAO.

wPOKT

wPOKT dev log #5 was published earlier today!Here’s the quick download:

1. CertiK signed on to do the bridge audit.
2. Pocket expects to close a second service agreement with another well-known firm for additional testing.
3. wPOKT community test on the Kovan testnet upcoming, details TBA soon.
4. Open invite for wPOKT multi-sig wallet (Gnosis Safe). Submit your pitch to the community and DAO by January 6th.
5. Pocket recommends including a “security by anonymity” option in the mulit-sig selection.

For more details and links, read the full developer log here:https://bit.ly/wPOKTdevlog5

Governance Updates

There are two active proposals in Pocket’s Snapshot at this point in time:

• PUP-10: Increase SessionNodeCount to 24
• PEP-18: Node Launcher (and Node Pilot continued)

These proposals are under active discussion by community members:

• PEP-16: Universal Contributor Income
• PIP-9: Consensus Rule Change - RC-0.8.0

PEP-17: Returning a Mistaken DAO Fee, Part 2 Electric Boogaloo

Passed ✅Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pep-17-returning-a-mistaken-dao-fee-part-2-electric-boogaloo/1323

PIP-8: Use Coordinape for Contributor & Voter Onboarding

Passed ✅Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pip-8-use-coordinape-for-contributor-voter-onboarding/1274There are two new proposals added this week:

PUP-11: WAGMI Inflation

Full proposal here:https://forum.pokt.network/t/pup-11-wagmi-inflation/1369Currently 1% of the hourly relay requests that come to Pocket Network are minted as POKT tokens and 89% of these rewards go to the servicer nodes who are servicing those relays in exchange for the work their nodes are doing. This approach builds a linear relationship between “Annual Inflation Rate” and “Relays Per Day”.

There are two plausible scenarios that could arrive with this approach:

1. As the number of relays increase, the 1% POKT rewards become really high which leads to very high and unsustainable annual inflation rates.
2. Running nodes to support the relays and Pocket Network have a fiat-based infrastructure cost which only increases with time as the size of Pocket’s blockchain & the blockchains it is supporting is increasing with time. In such a scenario if the daily relays drop below a critical threshold, it does not protect the node runners against very low rewards and running nodes will become unsustainable.

The proposal aims for sustainable inflation that protects rewards against a decrease in relays and sensibly reduces rewards as Pocket Network grows.This is one of the most important proposals for the future of Pocket Network and as such we are seeing very active involvement by the community members over this proposal. Click on the proposal link to read more about this and take part in the engaging discussions!

PEP-19: The Development of PocketRS, Ongoing Client Support, and Feature-Rich Documentation

Full proposal here: https://forum.pokt.network/t/pep-19-the-development-of-pocketrs-ongoing-client-support-and-feature-rich-documentation/1385This proposal, brought on by community member JAMSO Financial Group, LLC aims to design a POKT client (PocketJS) in the Rust programming language called PocketRS.How could this proposal help the Pocket Network ecosystem?Rust being a popular development language in the crypto community, PocketRS brings the Pocket client into the purview of system developers and enterprise software engineers who work on Rust. The base service of POKT is to provide developers with the tools to decentralize their access to specific blockchains. The goal would be to provide an upgrade to this base service to provide enterprise support as a community resource.The proposal asks for 500k POKT to fund the resources required and to provide support for up to 1 year.

Dev Updates

The first round of validator and servicer split got initiated on 16th Dec with a gradual change to 10,000 validators.

The team has now successfully rolled out the PIP-7 Validator / Servicer split. Node runners everywhere have reported lower CPU usage and generally better performance.Earlier this week Pocket blockchain faced a network-wide chainhalt at block height 45869, impacting all nodes and all service providers. During this time, a sharp spike in resource consumption was observed. This also caused the Pocket process to crash sporadically.The engineering team found that a few nodes that were synching from an invalid source were gossiping invalid evidence throughout the network, causing increased resource usage during validation. The situation was caused by invalid consensus evidence from a height previous to our Servicer/Validator split, causing a situation that pushed the resource usage of all nodes abnormally high, causing Block 45869 reach voting round 14 before the validators were able to be in sync to push the block through.This situation is going to be mitigated by our improved Evidence Handling in RC-0.8.0 outlined in PIP-9.

Community-developed Ecosystem Tools

POKTscan

Here are the latest releases and updates from POKTscan:

• ADD: Responsive support on Explore view
• ADD: Showing validator threshold on dashboard
• BUG FIX: By Chain and By Node Charts was not showing on mobile
• BUG FIX: Scroll on Tab bar was not possible
• BUG FIX: Some fields on By Chain and By Nodes Charts was not showing on mobile
• BUG FIX: Date Range Selector on Earn By Chain Table was not showing completely on mobile
• BUG FIX: Date Range Selector on Earn By Chain Table was not showing completely on mobile
• BUG FIX: Scroll on Select Node and Chains Selector drop downs was not possible.

Check out POKTscan and experience all the updates by going here.

Other Community Updates

Pocket’s Chief Meme Officer Nigel Dollentas put together a thread on twitter this week which talks about Pocket Network and what it us doing for the Web3. Read it here:

The $POKT pill 🧵

Despite Mainnet launch over a year ago and nearly a $1 billion MC, @pocketnetwork continues to fly under the radar for many.What is Pocket? How is it one of the most asymmetric bets that no one talks about?Find out here: pic.twitter.com/7PIuxIVzo6— Adventurer Nigel Dollentas🐙🔲🦇🔊| lootofloot.eth (@nigeldollentas) December 17, 2021

Did you miss Nodey?

Learn more about Pocket Network’s fundamentals from Nodey!In Chapter 4, Nodey explains the network layer of $POKT:

Missed Nodey? Don't worry they haven't gone anywhere!

In Chapter 4, Nodey explains the network layer of $POKTWhat's a topic Nodey should break down? Let us know in the comments below! pic.twitter.com/fsVVbkog7M— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) December 17, 2021

In episode#5 Nodey explains sessions and their role in Pocket Network:

Nodey Presents #5: What is a Session?

In today's episode, Nodey explains sessions and their role in Pocket Network.Is there a topic you want to learn about? Let Nodey know in the comments below! #Web3 $POKT pic.twitter.com/RLbRILby2H— Pocket Network | Is Hiring 👀🚀 (@POKTnetwork) December 23, 2021

Anyone can request for a topic they want to learn more on by simply replying to the above threads or also can head over to the Pocket Network’s docs.

POKTpool comes to Discord

The fractional staking pool officially launches their discord channel to manage their operations better and growing engagement with the pool members and the extended community at large.They have just launched their 6th tranche with 20+ nodes and 40+ community members partaking in the pool.In a matter of 6 weeks, the pool has grown to 73+ nodes and 1M+ POKT, providing testament to in the emerging community members’ beliefs in Pocket Network’s fundamentals and growth opportunities.You can join their Discord channel to learn more here: https://discord.gg/9v7TTNAyThey also have a telegram channel here: https://t.me/poktpool

POKTopus Den updates:

SANTA POKTopus is coming to town!To celebrate the Christmas holidays one lucky wallet will get 5k POKT on Xmas Eve. The contest is going on right now, you can participate by going here:

SANTA POKTOPUS IS COMING TO TOWN WITH A #POKTSTORM

1 lucky wallet will get a 5K stake in the #poktpool which will be a very Merry Xmas indeed! Follow me, like this tweet, and quote tweet with your pokt wallet address, and we'll randomly select a recipient at 12PM EDT on Xmas Eve pic.twitter.com/05546zo6Wk— The Poktopus | poktopus.eth🐙 (@thepoktopus) December 22, 2021

Pricing botPocket’s community members over at Jamso OTC added a pricing bot to the Poktopus Den.Using the command:/price@POKTPriceBotCommunity members can get an aggregate view of the 1, 3, 7, and 30-day VWAP of $POKT, along with a link to the community vetted OTC markets. Here's an example:

Node Runner Office HoursThis week’s Node Runner Office Hours spoke about:

• Making a repository of errors observed in the console while the node is running so it is easier to understand what is happening for anyone running the node. Potential dashboard reporting around this in existing tools.
• Algorand blockchain is in beta phase on the network and testing is ongoing. Node runners can start preparing their nodes and do testing now.
• Deep-dive on storage architecture for efficient running of nodes.

Watch the video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj9lKMTyYnANode Runner Office Hours is a weekly community call that happens every Wednesday at 1 PM, EST. Head over to the Pocket Network discord channel to subscribe to the call next Wednesday.https://bit.ly/POKTARCADEdscrd

News

The Block Research talks about Pocket Network

The Block Research firm recently released their 2020 Outlook report. The report talks about Pocket Network’s tremendous growth this year.

Great to see @POKTnetwork's recent traction get a 2-page feature in @TheBlockRes's 2020 Outlook report. Watch this space pic.twitter.com/zfWccEoJxv

— Nelson Ryan (@nelsonthechain) December 18, 2021

You can download/read the full report here.

Decentral Park Capital highlights Pocket Network

Lewis Harland of DPC shares 2021: 21 Graphs That Defined The Year For Crypto, highlighting Pocket’s exponential growth in protocol revenue mapped against month-over-month relay growth.

#19 @POKTnetwork Relay Count vs. Revenue pic.twitter.com/ax1GFETjYA

— Lewis Harland (@_LewisHarland_) December 23, 2021

What can you do to drive relays and add nodes to the network?

Apps & 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.

Nodes & Node Runners

Don’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.