About Pocket Network
Pocket Network is the world’s first and only fully permissionless, fully decentralized, open data delivery network. It is a self-healing network that routes around downtime, geopolitical restrictions, and any other barrier to completing a request for data.
While Pocket is best known for blockchain RPC access, the Shannon protocol is data-agnostic. The network relays any form of data — blockchain RPCs, AI inference requests, TOR nodes, Signal proxy relays, lightweight messaging services. Any form of data, from anywhere, to anywhere.
There are zero gatekeepers on Pocket Network. Being fully permissionless means anyone, anywhere, at any time, has full access to all protocol functionality.
The Problem
Every blockchain application needs RPC access. Traditionally, developers either run their own nodes (expensive, complex) or use centralized providers like Alchemy, Infura, or QuickNode (convenient, but creates a single point of failure). When a centralized provider has an outage, every application depending on it goes down simultaneously.
The problem is the same for any data service: centralization creates fragility.
How Pocket Solves It
Pocket Network operates a marketplace that matches Applications (who need data) with Suppliers (who run nodes or services). A decentralized Gateway layer routes requests to the best available Supplier automatically.
Here’s what happens when you make a data request through Pocket:
- Your request hits a gateway (like the public portal at api.pocket.network)
- The gateway looks up which Suppliers are available for your service and current session
- The QoS system selects the best Supplier based on latency, reliability, and correctness
- Your request is forwarded to the Supplier’s node or service
- The response comes back through the same path
- Behind the scenes, the Supplier earns POKT tokens for the work
This all happens transparently. From your application’s perspective, it’s just a normal API endpoint.
Why It Matters
No single point of failure. With 5,000+ independent nodes, Pocket’s architecture means that even if many nodes go offline simultaneously, requests route around the problem. At worst, service degrades gracefully — it never hard-fails from a single provider outage.
Fully permissionless. Anyone can register a new service on-chain. Anyone can run a Supplier node. There is no whitelist, no approval process, and no entity that can revoke your access.
Privacy-preserving. Pocket is one of the few network providers that passes all privacy checks on Chainlist, because it does not store any form of personally identifiable information. The only information stored is request origin and destination.
The protocol is completely on-chain. All transactions deduct fees in real time. Deflation is a verifiable on-chain parameter. Every aspect of the protocol’s economic functions is transparently on-chain — query the network and see for yourself.
Multi-chain and multi-service. One network, 60+ blockchains, plus AI inference, TOR, and other service types. See Supported Networks for what’s available on the public portal today.
No API key required. The public portal at api.pocket.network is open access. Start making requests immediately — no signup, no key management.
Non-profit infrastructure. The Pocket Network Foundation is a non-profit. There are no profit margins on relay traffic. This means costs are dramatically lower than commercial alternatives — $1 USD per billion compute units at wholesale rates.
The Four Actors
| Actor | Role | Analogy |
|---|---|---|
| Application | Pays for data access by staking POKT and consuming relays | A customer placing an order |
| Gateway | Routes requests from Applications to Suppliers via the QoS layer | A dispatcher connecting customers to workers |
| Supplier | Runs infrastructure (nodes, AI endpoints, etc.) and serves data requests | A worker fulfilling the order |
| Validator | Produces blocks and validates the chain | A notary recording everything |
How It Works: The Relay Lifecycle
Every piece of data served through Pocket Network follows the same cycle — from request to verified payment, without trusting any single party.
1. Session Assignment
The protocol assigns Suppliers to Applications in time-bounded windows called sessions. Given an Application, a service (like eth), and a block height, every node on the network independently calculates the exact same assignment. There is no central scheduler — the math is deterministic and manipulation-resistant.
2. Relay Serving
During a session, the Application sends data requests (relays) through a Gateway, which routes them to assigned Suppliers. A relay is a data request served through the protocol — the most common relay type today is a blockchain API call (“What’s this wallet’s balance?” or “What happened in this transaction?”), but the protocol supports any service type registered on-chain, including AI inference requests. The Supplier’s RelayMiner queries its backend service and returns the answer.
3. Claim Submission
After the session window closes, each Supplier submits a claim — an on-chain statement declaring how many relays they served. Think of it like a timesheet: “I served 50,000 relays for eth during session #12345.”
4. Proof Verification
The protocol doesn’t trust claims at face value. It requires each Supplier to submit a proof — cryptographic evidence that the work actually happened. Pocket uses a technique called probabilistic proofs: the protocol randomly selects specific relays from the session and the Supplier must prove those particular relays were served correctly. If the sample checks out, the full claim is accepted.
Probabilistic proofs are like a tax audit. The auditor doesn’t check every receipt — they spot-check a random sample. If the sample is clean, the full return is accepted. If not, further investigation follows. This keeps verification costs low while making cheating mathematically impractical.
5. Settlement
Once the proof is validated, the protocol settles the claim:
- Burn: POKT is burned from the Application’s stake (proportional to the compute units consumed)
- Mint: New POKT is minted — the mint ratio (currently 0.975) sets what fraction of burned POKT is re-minted; the remainder is permanent PIP-41 deflation
- Distribute: The minted POKT is split among participants:
| Recipient | Share |
|---|---|
| Supplier | 79% |
| Validators | 14% |
| DAO Treasury | 4.5% |
| Service Source Owner | 2.5% |
The Economic Loop
This creates a self-sustaining cycle:
Applications burn POKT → Suppliers earn POKT → more Suppliers join → better service → more Applications use the network → more POKT burned
The more the network is used, the more POKT is burned. With PIP-41’s deflation, total supply decreases over time as usage grows — aligning everyone’s incentives with network adoption.
Compute Units: How Work Is Priced
Not all relays are equal. A simple balance check is cheaper than a complex historical query. Pocket uses compute units (CUs) to measure work, and a governance-controlled exchange rate converts CUs to POKT.
The chain: Relays served → Compute units consumed → uPOKT burned/minted → POKT distributed
Different services have different CU costs. High-complexity chains cost more CUs per relay.
Key Concepts
- Relay — a single data request-response served through the protocol (a blockchain RPC call, an AI inference request, or any other supported service type).
- POKT — the native token. Applications burn it to consume relays, Suppliers earn it for serving them, and it is mildly deflationary over time.
- Session — the time-bounded window that assigns a set of Suppliers to a specific Application, computed deterministically from on-chain state rather than stored.
- Claims & Proofs — the mechanism Suppliers use to prove the work they did before the protocol settles payment.
The Shannon Protocol
Pocket’s current protocol is Shannon, named after Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. It replaced the original Morse protocol and introduced relay mining, Token Logic Modules, and a modular architecture built to scale. For the technical architecture, see Shannon Architecture; for the Morse → Shannon migration history, see Shannon Upgrade.
Next Steps
- Developers: Integration Examples — start using Pocket endpoints in 30 seconds
- Token holders: Token & Staking — understand POKT and staking options
- Node operators: Node Operators — run infrastructure and earn POKT
- Go deeper: Sessions, Claims & Proofs — the technical detail behind the relay lifecycle
- Tokenomics: POKT Tokenomics — the full economic model