Apr 8, 2022

6 min read

Pocket Network & OKC AMA Recap

On April 6th, the Business Developer of Pocket Network, Eric Ullrich, joined a live Ask Me Anything session on the official OKC Telegram channel and answered questions from the OKC team.

The purpose of the event was to introduce Pocket Network to the OKC Community.

The following is a recap of the AMA.

Please introduce POKT network to our community

Eric Ullrich: Pocket Network is a decentralized blockchain API built for Web3 apps. We make it easy for developers to get a JSON RPC endpoint for several different blockchains. If you are familiar with Infura or Alchemy, you can think of Pocket Network as a decentralized multi-chain alternative.

Since our mainnet launch in July 2020, we have served billions of API requests across our customers of 40+ blockchain mainnets & testnets. We are trusted by some of the most used projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as EthersJs, Scaffold.Eth and MyCrypto, as well as by Blockchain Foundations themselves such as Harmony, IoTex and others.

What are you working on now to help build awareness and grow your protocol?

Eric Ullrich: Pocket’s growth has been immense in the last months, and the team has worked relentlessly to support more blockchains to the network. In addition, we focus on making it easy for application developers to create RPC endpoints and access the data they need.

Integrating new chains on Pocket Network is essential for the growth of the protocol, given our supply & demand incentive mechanisms. The more service requests the network supports, the more revenue node runners receive, creating a cycle of attracting more runners, servicing more relays, and offering a better service for applications.

Our token, $POKT, is at the center of the marketplace between node runners and applications developers. Pocket is the first regenerative protocol, where its growth cycle, based on a token, generates revenue for the protocol and node runners.

What are Pocket’s unique selling points as compared to other similar projects in the industry?

Eric Ullrich: In the old paradigm, developers would go to centralized providers such as Infura or Alchemy. For example, for 1M requests per day Infura charges $225 USD (+250 USD for archival) per month to developers.

With Pocket Network there are no more monthly costs (i.e. subscription IaaS fees). Instead, developers stake POKT — Pocket Network’s native cryptocurrency — once up-front on behalf of their application(s) for the equivalent network bandwidth that is accessible and consumable for the lifetime of that stake.

The longer an application stays staked and uses Pocket Network, the closer their costs approach zero. This economic concept is called near-zero marginal costs. After some time, the service basically becomes free since there is no monthly rent due.

It’s important to highlight that the developers can always unstake, then resell POKT on a secondary market to recoup their initial costs.

Also, the Pocket DAO can push and pull economic levers such as the relay to POKT application rate at different stages of growth/maturity. This helps keep the decentralized RPC service (as a protocol) affordable to developers; and competitive against centralized RPC providers. For example, at launch, the relay to POKT application stake rate was 25k POKT for 1M requests per day then it was updated to 8k POKT for 1M requests per day and now 1.3k POKT for 1M requests per day.

However, you don’t have to stake POKT for 1M requests per day. We have a very generous free tier that covers up to 1M requests per day per RPC endpoint with a max of two per Pocket Portal account.

By leveraging the tokenomics of these different middleware protocols, developers can actually expect to see massive savings without sacrificing the benefits that come naturally with decentralization.

Why did Pocket decide to support the OKC network? And what are the benefits received by OKC given by Pocket?

Eric Ullrich: Pocket Network aims to partner with the hardest working teams out there. OKC has done a lot to attract innovative DeFi and trading apps and Pocket Network recognized the strength of this ecosystem early on. In addition to that, it has been great for Pocket to work with their team.

One of they key benefits to developers on OKC is they now have a fast and reliable RPC service. We are actively sponsoring developers by staking POKT on their behalf. Reach out to me for more info on this!

What future products can be developed by OKC now that it works with Pocket Network?

Eric Ullrich: Pretty much anything you can imagine that uses JSON RPC to connect to the blockchain!

OKC can continue to decentralize and serve users from all over the world with no latency trade-offs. Due to the global nature of Pocket Network’s nodes, OKC can rely on Pocket to give the best service to all its users. Their team will continue to innovate on the consensus, algorithms, and blockchain development; Pocket can take care of all the infrastructure and free up bandwidth.

What’s Infracon? How does it help Pocket Network and its community?

Eric Ullrich: Infracon is POKT Networks’ first conference focused on bringing builders in the web3 infrastructure space together for a weekend of inspiring talks, collaboration, and networking.

The event will be hosted in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic on May 20–21st.

You can learn a bit more here: https://www.infracon.org/

How much can I earn by running a node? And what are the requirements to run a full node in the pocket network and what are the incentives?

Eric Ullrich: To run a node, you’ll need to set up the Pocket full node, stake it with 15,100 POKT token, and link it to full nodes for the networks you want to earn POKT tokens on.

Node runners will then earn pokt based on the requests served by their nodes.

A good place to see performance of nodes is https://www.poktscan.com/explore. Scroll down and you can see the average POKT tokens earned per node across the network.

Also, here are our docs that provide more detailed info on running a node: https://docs.pokt.network/home/paths/node-runner

Every Wednesday at noon EST we have a node runner community call on our discord channel. That is a great place to ask questions and learn more.

Tell our community about buying, storing and staking $POKT token

Eric Ullrich: One of our favorite places to buy POKT is OKX :) However, users can buy pokt at several exchanges and also on OTC. You can see the list here: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/pocket-network/markets/

For storing it, we offer a great wallet. Get started with that here: https://wallet.pokt.network/

The only official way to stake it through your own POKT service node. You’ll need to set up your node and stake it following the instructions in the docs.

What’s the utility of wPOKT?

Eric Ullrich: wPOKT will be an ERC20 token that will allow all sorts of new functionality with the EVM space. Currently, POKT is not EVM compatible token.

As far as a utility when wPOKT is launched, we look forward to innovation in this space. It could include liquidity across the EVM ecosystem, governance utility, new staking functionality, and all sorts of interesting things we haven’t yet imagined.

What future plans does Pocket Network have?

Eric Ullrich: Our team has big plans on all fronts.

Probably the most impactful will be the release of the next version of the POKT network core protocol. This will be a purpose-built layer 1 blockchain solution, focused exclusively on the unique needs of POKT network. This will allow us to massively scale our network to someday handle trillions of requests per day across thousands of blockchain networks.

Learn more about it here: https://docs.pokt.network/home/v1/v1-overview

Here are Pocket Network's social links

Official Links: Website | https://www.pokt.network/

wPOKT | https://bit.ly/WrappedPOKT

Network Stats | https://bit.ly/C0D3R_PocketStats

Protocol Docs | https://docs.pokt.network/home/main-concepts/protocol

Economics Docs | https://docs.pokt.network/home/main-concepts/economics Constitution | https://bit.ly/PocketDAOConstitution

Lean Governance Thesis | https://bit.ly/LeanGovernance

GitHub | https://github.com/pokt-network

Developer Docs | https://docs.pokt.network/home/paths/app-developer

Node Docs | https://docs.pokt.network/home/paths/node-runner

Forum | https://forum.pokt.network/