Pocket Network News - NOV 2020
Pocket node runners have processed more than 331.7M relays since mainnet launch, added 102 new nodes to Pocket Network in a single week, upgraded the protocol to Pocket Core RC-0.5.1, and more!
Pocket Launch Updates:
It’s been a little over three and a half months since Pocket Network launched. Since the mainnet launch, Pocket Network has processed more than 331.7M relays!
At 0.01 POKT minted per relay served and validated, this translates to ~3.3M POKT minted across the board (89% to service nodes, 1% to block producers, and 10% to DAO) in network revenue.
Over the last four weeks, Ethereum applications using the Pocket Gateway have driven a total of ~200 million requests. That means nodes have minted a total of 2,006,322.94POKT, with 89% going to the service nodes (1,785,627.42 POKT), 10% going to the Pocket DAO (200,632.29 POKT), and 1% going to the block producers (20,063.23 POKT).
There are currently 621 staked nodes in Pocket Network. That’s an increase of 102 nodes since last week!
Weekly Relay Recap #3 Monthly Newsletter Edition
10/15 to 10/21 50,254,361
10/22 to 10/28 48,000,357
10/29 to 11/04 46,374,218
11/05 to 11/11 56,003,358
Total (Last 4 Weeks) 200,632,294
Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get monthly updates and weekly relay recaps.
Total AUG 2,779,336
Total SEP 29,172,219
Total OCT 209,614,175
Since beginning of NOV: 90,210,559 (NOV 1st -12th)
AVG Relays per Day (in AUG): 132,349.33
AVG Relays per Day (in SEP): 972,407.3
AVG Relays per Day (In OCT): 6,761,747.58
AVG Relays per DAY (in NOV): 7,517,546.58
AVG Relays per Week (in AUG) 926,445.33
AVG Relays per Week (in SEP): 7,293,054.75
AVG Relays per Week (in OCT): 52,403,543.75
AVG Relays per Week (in NOV): 48,574,916.39
Most Relays in AUG: 675,991 (AUG 27th)
Most Relays in SEP: 2,055,290 (SEP 15th)
Most Relays in OCT: 12,779,902 (OCT 7th)
Most Relays in NOV: 8,455,650 (NOV 6th)
From looking at the data, a few patterns start to emerge.
This last week 11/05-11/11 compared to the previous two weeks, 10/22-10/28 and 10/29 to 11/04, saw an increase of ~8M requests and ~10M requests respectively 🤯
The total relay count for the month of OCT (209,614,175) was 7.19x of that of SEP (29,172,219) and 75.42x of AUG (2,779,336) 🤯
There’s a slight bump of ~750k in the average relays per day in NOV (7,517,546) compared to OCT (6,761,747). 7.73x compared to SEP (972,407) and 56.8x compared to AUG (132,349) 🤯
So far, the total number of relays for November sits around 90M. If the current trend of ~7.5M average relays per day continues, the NOV relay count will eclipse that of OCT by a little bit 🤯
What other metrics and insights would you’d like to see? Let us know in Discord or on Twitter.
If you are a node operator and interested in monetizing your existing infrastructure, give us a holler on Discord. Interested apps and developers can reserve up to 1,000,000 requests per day. Since we are staking POKT on behalf of users to enable a free tier, there’s only a limited amount of spots available. Sign up for our 1M Relay Waitlist ASAP!
Developer Updates:
Pocket Dashboard
In October, we stealth launched the Pocket Dashboard for ETHOnline hackers and teams. During this closed beta period, ETHOnline participants helped identify areas of improvement.
The Pocket Dashboard is in its latest stages. After another few rounds of testing and QA, then it should be ready to leave Beta for a public release.
Pocket Applications & PocketJS
A data inconsistency with the Pocket Web Wallet and Pocket Block Explorer was patched. Also, our application solution team was able to squash a couple of PocketJS bugs and fix them.
Pocket Core
In mid-October, a majority of node runners made a collective effort to upgrade the protocol to the Pocket Core RC-0.5.1 release candidate. This made significant QOL upgrades to the existing protocol.
Some of these features include but are not limited to:
Add terminal completions
Ensure pocket-evidence is deleted in all lifecycles
Claims are now not sent if below minimum proofs
Rollback blocks/override app hash in case of non-deterministic state
AAT now printing as JSON string and not bytes
By adding terminal completions, developers and node operators using the CLI are now able to see a command ahead of time before typing it completely. Through ensuring that pocket-evidence is deleted in all life cycles, it is reducing the bloat on the state of the blockchain. Establishing a minimum threshold of proofs before sending claims out has been able to decrease resource consumption. Instead of clearing an entire database, an ability to roll back a few blocks has been added just in case of a non-deterministic state.
For a full list of features, you can review the changelog in this GitHub repo.
RC-0.5.2 is in development, and currently testing in pre-release beta. Some of the important features to highlight include:
Configuration to remove ABCILogs
Spread out claims/proofs between non-session blocks
Don’t broadcast claims/proofs if synching
Log Relay Errors to Nodes
Add order to AccountTxs query & blockTxsQuery RPC
Simply offering a configuration to remove ABICLogs reduced our local instances by 3GB storage, thereby further reducing the bloat on the blockchain state. By spreading out claims/proofs between non-session blocks, it’s allowing for more equal distribution of network traffic. While a node is synching, it won’t broadcast claims/proofs. This reduces the resource load of an individual node while also making sure applications only get served by fully-synched nodes. By expanding the ability to log relay errors for nodes (and not just returning to the client), node operators will find it useful to leverage a very helpful configurable debug to identify why their relays may not being through.
For a full list of features, you can review the changelog in this GitHub repo.
Altogether, the features from both Pocket Core RC-0.5.1 and Pocket Core RC-0.5.2 will not only improve the performance and quality of service, but also the stability of the protocol. We’ll announce when Pocket RC-0.5.2 is ready for public release, so that node operators will know to upgrade and configure their nodes to the new release candidate.
Economic and Governance Updates:
POKT Arcade - A Community Gamification Layer
With the recent influx of new members in our Discord server, we’ve decided to release POKT Arcade ahead of the governance tooling that will integrate with it. Most of the pieces are actually in place (BrightID, Snapshot, Aragon, bots, channels, roles, quests, custom emojis, etc), but there’s one piece to the puzzle that is crucial before officially launching Pocket Governance 1.0. As soon as this tool releases its new set of features, we will integrate it into Discord shortly after. In the meantime, we are launching the game POKT Arcade first.
This will help our new community members to learn about the protocol while simultaneously onboarding them into the protocol’s ecosystem by completing quests, gaining experience, and evolving into new roles.
Join our Discord community server today to play the game tomorrow!
Here’s a little taste of what to expect:
News:
MyCrypto
In their most recent release, MyCrypto has added Pocket Network to its default list of network providers. This gives users the option to choose a decentralized Ethereum API alongside other centralized providers like Infura and Etherescan, as well as, MyCrypto’s own node infrastructure.
It’s literally one step: connect your wallet to MyCrypto (or create a new wallet).
You don’t even have to manually choose Pocket. MyCrypto has a load-balancer in place that determines which node provider loads for you by default in order to make sure that no single node gets too much of a load. It essentially cycles through the list of default node providers, which now includes Pocket Network.
ETHOnline by ETHGlobal
The month-long ETHGlobal hackathon ETHOnline officially ended at the beginning of November. It may be by far the biggest Ethereum hackathon to date. 700 developers and 2600 summit attendees signed up across 65 countries as well as 19 timezones. According to the ETHOnline Project Showcase, 190 projects were officially submitted.
A total of 12 teams used Pocket Network for their ETHOnline project. Altogether they’ve won 3250 in DAI!
Two of the Pocket prize winners Unite and Flashbank made it into the finales 😍
Outlier Ventures
In Outlier Ventures’ “Founders of Web3” podcast series, Jamie Burke sits down with CEO and Co-Founder Michael O’Rourke of Pocket Network. They talk about the history of node infrastructure in public blockchain networks, the problem of increasing centralization, and the importance of democratising the use of full nodes.
Crypto Isn’t Decentralized; the Importance of Full Node Infrastructure with Michael O’Rourke
Behind the Scenes:
Zero to Node
An educational video series will be published and shared within the next few weeks. The raw recordings were completed, and the initial edits were also finished. It’s going through a round of reviews before moving forward with final edits. This series is going to be great for those interested in running their own node(s). As long as you follow along with Zero to Node, you’ll be able to confidently spin, run, and maintain a production-level node!
Pocket Infrastructure Bootstrap Program
Chainstack has signed up to be a part of the Pocket Infrastructure Bootstrap Program (PIBP), which provides an 18-month interest-free loan of Pocket Network’s native cryptocurrency POKT. It’s meant to encourage early participation in the protocol to help provide a base layer of enterprise-grade infrastructure for Pocket Network, which in turn establishes a baseline of highly-available, professional-quality nodes for applications to be served by.
The timing couldn’t be better, especially with the Zero to Node series coming out soon. As part of their ecosystem participation in Pocket Network, Chainstack has offered a discount on Ethereum nodes for community members to point their Pocket nodes to.
More details will be available, so stay tuned for an announcement!
Pocket Node Improvement Board - A Node Leaderboard
A node leaderboard is under construction. It will provide node operators a resource to see both the number of successful relays and the number of error relays served by a node in their operation. Other metrics will include average relay time, POKT rewards lost/gained, error codes, serviced blockchain, and associated node public key.
By providing a frame of reference on the performance of a node, node operators will be able to use that information to diagnose any issue(s) with their individual nodes and improve the health of their own node operation.
Wall of Tweets and Memes:
Connect with Pocket:
🦜 Follow Pocket on Twitter at @POKTnetwork
💬 Chat with the Pocket team and community in Discord
🏗️ Get started with running a node or deploying an app