BlockTalks x Pocket Network AMA Transcript!
We recently hosted an AMA with Pocket Network on January 30th at 2.30 PM UTC. Many of you might have participated, or many of you might not. But we ensure no one misses out on the knowledge shared by Gabriela Rodriguez, Director of ecosystem development at Pocket Network. So here we are up with the AMA transcript; for those who missed the live session, this blog post will be a saver & feeder of knowledge for them.
Introduction Questions Asked By Team BlockTalks!
Q1. Could you please introduce Pocket Network to our community in layman’s terms?
Ans — Pocket Network has two sides: supply and demand. On the supply side, Pocket Network pays node operators to host blockchain data (paid in the native token, $POKT).
On the demand side, Pocket Network enables applications to access the blockchain data without needing to run a node.
An example: If a wallet app needs to find the balance of a particular account, it can use Pocket to query the blockchain and retrieve the balance information. With the release of Shannon (our new protocol!), Pocket will expand the offering beyond blockchain to include other open data such as open source LLMs.
The CTO of our labs team wrote out some analogies, you can check them out here: https://medium.com/decentralized-infrastructure/7-pocket-network-analogies-14aecd8086ed
Q2. What are the advantages of Pocket Network to the other alternatives in the Blockchain field?
Ans — At a high level, there are 3 key advantages: permissionless, flexible and highly redundant. I’ll explain each further.
Permissionless: Becoming a node operator is completely permissionless. Anyone can stake their full nodes on Pocket to start earnings rewards. Non-technical people can work with node operators like other staking services.
With the Shannon upgrade, the demand side will be completely permissionless as well. Any application will be able to stake and access any of the available services for a very low cost. No middleman, no contracts.
Here are some relevant links if you’re curious: https://docs.pokt.network/node-operators/operate-a-node
Pocket Network is also flexible. It is very easy to add a blockchain or service to Pocket. The only time limitation is the length of time for the node to sync. This is important for the Shannon upgrade: Verified service owners (ex: blockchain foundations) will have the opportunity to earn a % of the revenue generated on the network, in perpetuity!
The last benefit is high redundancy.
As of this week, Pocket has ~10k nodes staked on the network. This volume minimizes the risk of a service being “down” due to issues with a single node. As traffic increases on the network, this number should increase as well.
For more details on node distribution, check out POKTScan: https://poktscan.com/
Q3. What are the major milestones Pocket Network achieved so far & what are in the future pipeline?
Ans — The first is that Pocket Network has been in mainnet since 2020!!! We have serviced nearly 1 trillion requests on 60+ blockchains.
We have learned a lot from 5 years in prod and are gearing up for our new protocol upgrade this year! It’s called the Shannon upgrade and should go live in Q2.
Last but not least, we’re proud to announce our accelerator program next week!
Out of 100s of applicants, we have selecte 6 to receive grants to build on Pocket. If you’re interested in learning more, please follow us on X and check out the program info.
program info: https://pocket.network/empowering-builders-the-pokt-gateway-accelerator-tour-pgat/
Questions Asked on 𝕏 for the Pocket Network Team!!
Q1. How does Pocket Network’s mission align with the growing demand for decentralized infrastructure in the digital space?
Ans — Pocket is the pioneer decentralized RPC project. We’ve been building and sustaining a global, permissionless node network for 5 years and serving some of the biggest names in web3 along the way.
Decentralized infra has always been our mission and with our experience, we are primed to meet the increasing demand with the launch of Shannon.
I've got some papers our team has published if anyone is interested:
https://pocket.network/tl-dr-summary-of-the-ai-litepaper/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10672
Q2. Beyond blockchain RPCs, what types of data services will POKT support after the Shannon Upgrade?
Ans — We’re really excited to expand our services to include large language models (LLMs) and decentralized social protocols like AT protocol.
The AI Litepaper goes into a bit more detail about how we’re thinking about AI.
Q3. Can you explain how Pocket’s RelayChain protocol works and how it connects dApps to blockchain networks?
Ans — This can be a long, complicated answer. To keep it simple,
1. dApps send API requests to the protocol via the gateway tooling.
2. The gateway tooling routes the request to the best available node.
3. The node answers the request.
More technical details can be found in our docs: https://docs.pokt.network/pokt-protocol/the-morse-protocol
Q4. What are the potential implications of Pocket Network’s decentralized infrastructure for traditional industries beyond Web3, such as in AI data handling or IoT device management? How is POKT positioning itself to capture these markets, and what partnerships or developments are anticipated to facilitate this expansion?
Ans — We are very much researching and preparing for infrastructure needs beyond blockchain. AI is a great example. Pocket will be able to support inference requests by hosting LLMs.
There is also a surge in popularity for AI agents transacting onchain, a narrative called DeFAI. Pocket provides RPC access to dozens of blockchains making it an easy choice for AI agents who need to transact on behalf of their users. We talked a bit about it in this thread here: https://x.com/poktnetwork/status/1884629100846813252?s=61
Q5. Can you describe the technical framework Pocket Network uses for its DAO governance, specifically how proposals are executed on the protocol level?
Ans — When proposals are posted, eligible DAO voters debate and critique the proposal. This allows the proposer to make necessary edits so that the proposal vote results in an action. There are different kinds of proposals. Some require governance transactions to change specific parameters onchain.
More info on governance here: https://docs.pokt.network/community/governance
Questions Asked by our BlockTalks Community Members during live Session to Pocket Network Team!!
Q1. What is the main function of POKT token in the POKTnetwork ecosystem?
Ans — The POKT token is used on both supply and demand. Suppliers stake their nodes and earn rewards in POKT. Demand side users stake to access the network.
Q2. What is your roadmap plan for this year 2025? Can you share it with us?
Ans — https://github.com/orgs/pokt-network/projects/144
Q3. It’s stated in the whitepaper that once Shannon is deployed to mainnet, POKT holders will have access to all Cosmos wallets, e.g., Keplr and Leap. This sounds great, but can you tell us what Shannon is, what its deployment means for the POKT community and when it will take place?
Ans — Shannon is the new protocol upgrade. It will still leverage the POKT token. It is said to go live in Q2 2025.
Q4. What initiatives are planned to onboard new builders and partners into the ecosystem and could you list till now how many partners and investors you have onboarded?
Ans — We are building out an accelerator program that we are launching next week. We are also building out incentive programs for post launch.
Q5. What are the technical requirements for becoming a Node runner in the Pocket Network?
Ans — Technical reqs can be found here: https://docs.pokt.network/node-operators/operate-a-node
Q6. How do I buy $POKT? Which exchanges is POKT listed on?
Here are some important links to Pocket Network 👇🏻
✅ Website: pocket.network
✅ Discord: discord.gg/pocket-network
✅ Coinmarketcap: coinmarketcap.com/currencies/pocket-network/
✅ 𝕏: x.com/POKTnetwork
