At long, long, last, we are finally preparing to bring Shannon online. June 3rd marks the evolution of Pocket from our extended open beta into what I always envisioned Pocket could be.
It’s been an incredibly busy time at the Foundation, both in working with the ecosystem preparing for the Shannon migration, and within the Foundation itself, making sure we are the leanest and most fiscally sound organization possible to prepare for the bright future ahead of us. And it’s also been a busy time for me personally, as I’ve moved to Mexico, and have begun the work of building a new life in a new country. I know this update has been overdue, and I apologize for the time it’s taken. There will be a lot of ground to cover here, and hopefully it will set the stage for what future communications look like.
First, I want to make sure that credit is given where it’s due. Since the beginning of February, @Jinx has been leading the day to day at the Foundation, and by every measure, doing an amazing job of it. I set out a series of objectives and requirements when he came on board, and under his leadership, and with Consu as Comptroller, the Foundation has accomplished it. The annual budget will be nearly half of what it was last year once the Shannon upgrade is complete. All existing Foundation programs have been rebuilt to focus on long term sustainability. Financial reporting and transparency have never been higher, and the Foundation’s agreements with its vendors are now contracted, not spelled out in a Telegram chat or a verbal conversation. It’s running like a business should.
I also want to thank @TracieCMyers for bringing her experience with both tokenomics and the ecosystem at large to the Foundation. In short order, she’s gotten her hands around the support needs of the noderunners for the migration, and is directly handling exchange support to make sure our markets are handled during the upgrade.
When I became the Director of PNF, I had a number of long term goals that I set out. Some of them are on track, some of them are reliant on the upgrade being completed, and some of them we’ve let go of based on research and feedback. Having big ideas means that sometimes they don’t work out. That will never stop us from having them. Pocket is a protocol that was founded on big ideas, and we will always push to be one of the most innovative projects out there.
The important things are on target. We’re in the final countdown to the Shannon upgrade. Inflation is effectively at 0%, with users of the network paying the suppliers of the network. We have a strong ongoing development plan for the year ahead, with a final feature set that will make Pocket a robust option for anyone building an open data driven app. The price action hasn’t reflected that yet, much to my disappointment, but I’m hoping that post-Shannon launch, the strength and adoption of the network will help us turn that corner.
We stand on the edge of the single most important upgrade to the protocol in its history. Before we launched Pocket mainnet back in 2020, there was no such thing as a decentralized RPC protocol. Pocket has always been a zero to one protocol, pushing forward on a vision that I and my fellow founders shared about how blockchain should work: decentralized, permissionless, and available to all. We weren’t able to accomplish all of those objectives during the long public beta which we’re now concluding, but we’ve learned a lot along the way. And with Shannon, we are once again going to be the pioneers of blockchain, with a truly decentralized, truly permissionless network, which operates on core business fundamentals. We may be the very first project in the web3 space who can accurately make that claim.
I believe strongly that if we hadn’t moved to change leadership at the Foundation when we did, we would not be ready to launch Shannon today, and with apps ready to launch with it. Strong action was required to push things forward across the line, and with actual sustainable economics for the future. The Foundation would also not have been recapitalized and right-sized from an annual budget perspective. Sometimes it takes a little pain to make the adjustments required to become healthier, and we leaned into that pain.
That being said, I also think it’s time to talk about the future. It’s ironic that one of the worries around PIP-38 was that I would become a dictator for life, and one of the current worries is that I’m not directly active enough in managing the Foundation’s operations. As anyone who’s worked with me in the past knows, I’ve never been a day to day operational leader. My strengths have always been around vision and big picture, and I’ve often been a bottleneck around finite daily decisions. Once I got my hands around the state of the Foundation, I decided that to be effective, I needed to put the right people in the right jobs, and avoid being a bottleneck here. I think we can all agree that that approach has been successful from an operational perspective.
Looking at the future, though, I think it’s clear that we need to bring in additional experience to the Director positions in the Foundation. We’ve never been a strong technical organization, which makes no sense for a technical product. We’ve never had a growth leader, something strongly needed for the years to come. The Directorship of the Foundation should reflect the needs of the Foundation, with the skills to match. As a Founder, my input on vision and big picture will always have a place, but I’m ready to help the next generation of leadership take Pocket forward on Shannon to the place I believe it deserves in the global technology landscape. I know a few different people have talked about running for the position of Director after Shannon launches, and I support that, and I’ll help with efforts to recruit talent from outside of the ecosystem as well. Once we have an appropriate replacement for me in a Director role, I intend to step down.
That doesn’t in any way mean I’m leaving the ecosystem. After putting eight years of my life and dreams into this, I couldn’t imagine not having eyes on it moving forward, and contributing where appropriate. But I recognize that those closest to the heart of the project must also be the ones who are well positioned to lead Pocket into the future. I’ve given it my all, and once the Shannon upgrade is complete, it will be time for more experienced leadership to take the helm.
We’re in exciting times for Pocket right now, in spite of the lackluster market action. The next couple of weeks are the equivalent of graduation day; our little baby is all grown up. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to see us truly achieve the dream of a fully permissionless decentralized data network, and I am grateful for every single person who has been a part of this journey along the way. The future of Pocket is both unlimited and unstoppable. I can’t wait to see where we go next.