PNF had a board meeting with Michael O’Rourke and Chris ‘Jinx’ Jenkins from PNF attending, as well as the appointed Board Observers, Bowen Li & Cryptocorn.
1- Review of Pocket since the last board meeting:
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Migration to F-chains worked well. While there was a cost in the brief ramping up then down of emissions to encourage Node-runners to switch to using F-chains, the incentive had its desired effect and the exercise was considered to be a success.
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TruthCartel have been onboarded to Pocket, which took about a month. Jinx is in almost daily conversation with them, and they are focused on securing media placements for Pocket, particularly unpaid spots, but the reality is that most media in crypto is largely ‘pay to play’. Budget has appropriately been allocated for paid media placements.
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The Pocket Gateway Accelerator Tour program, or PGAT was considered the most exciting development of the period. PNF are excited to see the program progress and both Jinx and Mike are committed to spending significant time to build and manage PGAT after Saeed has had to step down due to the difficulties of New York State regulation. The teams chosen to enter this round of PGAT (from ~200 applicants) are mainly focused on bringing AI applications to Pocket.
2- Next steps towards Shannon:
- Consuelo, better known to the community as Consu, has been promoted to the Comptroller for Pocket. Part of her work will be to implement service agreements and contracts with vendors and suppliers, as opposed to the more ad hoc agreements that have been used in the past.
- One of the remaining challenges facing Pocket for the Shannon launch is the token migration. A technical oversight group has been set up to discuss and oversee the migration and is working with partners like Raidguild to make sure that 3rd party services like the bridges will work with the migrated POKT.
- Pocket is speaking with AI companies about using Shannon, outside of the PGAT applicants. This will likely accelerate as Shannon launches and Webhooks is implemented at the PATH and then Shannon level. However, Pocket users can already run inferences over Shannon, but an increase is expected as Webhooks is offered.
- We are expecting a heavy push to showcase PGAT. Think personal interviews, demonstrations, background stories etc. This will all lead up to Demo Day.
- The web wallet will receive an overhaul.
3- Shannon Launch and Post Shannon:
- We expect a change to tokenomics with the launch of Shannon or soon after. Although not finalized yet, those familiar with Pocket tokenomics are modeling out scenarios to suggest a new tokenomics model. A 1:1 Mint to Burn is the focus for Supplier emissions. Current thoughts are to offer a 40/40/20% emissions model for Validations, DAO, and Servicers respectively. A second major focus will be to increase the Validator rewards, to increase the security of the network, and move more supplier tokens towards staking Validators as opposed to Servicers.
- Tokenomics aspires to return emissions to the 2.5% - 5% annually previously employed.
- Gateways will start to be charged again for using Pocket with the introduction of the new tokenomics. There will likely be a pool of tokens offering stepped rebates to Gateways in order to introduce them more gradually to paying for Pocket’s services.
- Exactly how to charge Gateways for services is still being debated. It is likely that PNF will move away from a ‘per relay’ model to either per Compute Unit (more accurate) or a tiered system of payment per bracket of relays/CUs.