Hi everyone,
We have come a long way since we shared PNF’s ecosystem strategy with the community on 17 April 2023.
At the time, we had no shared objectives that we were collectively working towards, and there was plenty of problems to tackle;
- supply growth was almost 20% annually,
- the protocol had zero revenue, which excluded POKT Network from consideration on important Web3/DePIN dashboards, such as DePIN Ninja, Token Terminal and Web3 Index,
- liquidity for POKT was incredibly thin,
- all relays relied on Pocket Network Inc,
- POKT Network had zero institutional coverage from Messari or anyone else,
- PNF had no Head of Marketing and the little press coverage that POKT Network received was almost exclusively negative,
- the protocol team needed a new product manager and were short a couple of key engineering hires too, and
- funding impactful contributions was arduous, resulting in very few active community contributors, and natural frustration from those who ran the gambit of the full proposal process.
In short, there was a lot to do.
This update aims to summarise what we’ve done so far this year and to share our updated objectives for what we want to achieve by the end of Q2 2024, which we anticipate will coincide with the end of the Era and launch of Shannon on mainnet.
The road to becoming the RPC Base Layer
Please read the release notes from the latest ERA updates - Cycle 1 here and Cycle 2 here - for more detail on everything that has been worked on over the last 7 months.
Ambition #1: Pocket has $1B of annual protocol revenue
2023 achievements so far:
- reduced POKT’s supply growth to less than 5% annually
- turned on protocol revenue
- Nodies gateway launch
- Started work on the OSS gateway stack
Situation today (Q4 2023):
Two gateway operators sending approximately c.400m daily relays to the network, resulting in c.$10k protocol revenue per month, down from highs of over $30k per month. POKT has burned over 6M POKT in cumulative protocol revenue.
Q2 2024 objectives:
- Onboard two new high-potential gateway operators, each capable of delivering 1B+ daily relays to the network
- Build a pipeline of 5+ additional high-potential gateway operators, each capable of sending 500m+ daily relays to the network - to be onboarded at the launch of Shannon
- All new gateway operators (excluding Grove) sending an aggregate of 5B+ daily relays to the network
Ambition #2: Pocket has the most trusted infrastructure brand in crypto
2023 achievements so far:
- Hired world-class Head of Marketing
- New brand strategy
- New website
- New docs
- DevDAO partnership - preferred RPC
Situation today (Q4 2023):
While the situation is much better today than at any other time in the past 18 months, POKT Network has low top-of-mind awareness among end-user devs and low consideration among those who are aware, with some having a negative brand perception. Negative brand perception is pronounced where poor product/service has been experienced.
Q2 2024 objectives:
- Top-of-mind awareness at 20+% of surveyed respondents.
- Brand relationship to POKT Network switches from negative consideration (as of today) to positive consideration of POKT Network.
- Sentiment switches from negative to positive when asked to agree whether or not POKT Network is the most trusted infra brand in crypto.
Ambition #3: Pocket has the institutional financial rails expected of a blue-chip token
2023 achievements so far:
- Launch of wPOKT
- Achieved wPOKT liquidity goals (10x better 2% liquidity depth than on CEXs)
Situation today (Q4 2023):
The launch of the wPOKT Uniswap pool on Ethereum massively improved liquidity for POKT/wPOKT, making it much easier for new entrants to join the POKT Network ecosystem and reducing friction for existing community members. However, POKT’s CEX offering is limited and not globally distributed enough. The community would also like to see wPOKT on more EVM chains, such as Arbitrum, Optimism and/or Polygon.
Q2 2024 objectives:
- Launch phase two of wPOKT
- At least one tier 1 exchange listing
Ambition #4: Shannon is the most successful new protocol launch ever
2023 achievements so far:
- Supporting Celestia/Rollkit rollup pivot
- Started Blockscience economic R&D
- Hired a new Head of Product and supported the hiring of new protocol engineering hires
- Onboarded 7 independent Morse maintainers from the community - across testnet, mainnet and snapshots - to enable the protocol team to focus on Shannon.
Situation today (Q4 2023):
Outsourcing key blockchain components, such as consensus, data availability and execution, to world-class teams like Celestia and Rollkit frees up the protocol team’s time to focus more on improving POKT’s core RPC service. POKT will also benefit from more shared open source code and infrastructure, such as bridges, explorers, and liquidity pools. However, given that POKT Network is a live working protocol, the migration to Shannon is a complex endeavour with many dependencies. Ensuring a safe and effective launch is crucial.
Q2 2024 objectives:
- Launch the Shannon protocol upgrade as safely and quickly as possible
- All Morse Integrations are live on Shannon Day 1
Ambition #5: Pocket has the healthiest culture and governance of any DAO
2023 achievements so far:
- Project DNA to align on mission, vision and values
- Sharing of ecosystem strategy to set direction
- Launch of ERA program to drive more impact more quickly
- Launch of Sockets and POPs leading to more experimentation and new talent entering the community
- eg new wallet, design work, testnet maintainers, metrics dashboard, etc
- New modular governance framework design and specifications - see PGOVs 1, 2, 3, 4
Situation today (Q4 2023):
The community is now much more aligned and connected, but the governance system still isn’t as representative as it can be of all of POKT Network’s stakeholders. Additionally, onboarding into the POKT Network community involves too much friction, and we - as a broader collective - could be more collaborative and effective.
Q2 2024 objectives:
- Deliver a fully specced modular governance upgrade by the end of December (due to go live for voting in January)
- We (PNF and the community) will provide each other the feedback, support and accountability we need to hit all of our Q2 2024 objectives
- Two separate new ecosystem members entrants to join the ecosystem and achieve funded proposals
- Our Pocket DNA is recognised as a key ingredient in everything we do
Roadmap and Budgeting
See a summary of the updated roadmap below:
Funding
PNF has taken care to effectively manage the treasury of POKT entrusted to us in the Era Budget. We successfully executed a number of OTC deals, even when interest in POKT was low, to ensure that we could execute the keystone projects and responsibly use the POKT entrusted to us. We are happy to report that we maintain a healthy balance of stables in the Era SAFE and that, even with all of the progress above, we still have over one-third of the POKT in the Era budget - 16.3m POKT - remaining at our disposal.
Given the updated objectives outlined in this post, we expect to incur significant additional expenses not anticipated when the Era Budget was originally requested. These include:
- Costs for running a Sequencer for the Shannon upgrade
- Audits for the launch of Shannon
- Additional grants and open RFPs to fund tooling and infra to support the growth and quality of the new Gateway ecosystem
- Continued support for community maintenance of Morse
- Additional listing fees for Tier 1 exchanges for POKT/wPOKT
- Liquidity incentives for phase 2 of wPOKT and new liquidity pools
- Marketing spend to boost brand visibility, build excitement around POKT Network, and support Gatewayverse and the launch of Shannon
It is our expectation, based on our effective budget management so far, that we can cover these costs within the original amount of POKT given to us in the Era budget. We are proud that we can continue to pursue our ambitions and deliver even more than was set out in the Era budget without requesting more POKT from the DAO at this time.
Calls to action and next steps
First things first, please help us improve the new docs by making suggestions where relevant. You can also leave us more general feedback in Discord and open a ticket if you have questions.
We also want to support anyone who can help us realise these ambitions via Sockets (quick grants), or by creating new POPs (open RFPs), which can leverage the power of our community and growing list of partners. If you have something in mind please reach out to Zak or Ben.
What’s coming next on the funding front is that we will be sharing PNF’s annual budget for 2024 next week. It shouldn’t include any surprises, as we hope that the community has been following our updates and projections via the quarterly reports. In any case, we look forward to your feedback and help as part of the next phase of POKT Network’s journey.
Many thanks,
PNF
