Actors on the Pocket Network:

Meet the forces behind unstoppable open data.

Pocket’s purpose is to power unstoppable open data and open infrastructure, governed by its users.

It allows developers to access data from 50+ chains with low cost and high resilience with just one connection. To achieve it, The Pocket Network needs to incentivize and coordinate a decentralized network of operators to run nodes that enable applications to read and write to blockchains.

This is not just an aspirational reality - as of August 2025, Pocket approaches 1 Trillion relays served from gateways to thousands of nodes to across 22 countries. In its current protocol architecture, Pocket Network can serve any open-data source to any and all supported blockchains, soon to be, any blockchain.

Ok, so far we understood what Pocket does and how Pocket’s technology is ready to provide the world with unstoppable open data. Let’s look at the networked actors involved in making it a reality.

These are the networked agents that turn “providing unstoppable data trustlessly” into an infinite game that will help fuel the economies of the future:

ACTOR	ROLE
Node Runners:	Operate the infrastructure that services data requests.
Gateways:	Provide user-friendly access to the Pocket Network.
Liquidity Providers	Get yield while supplying $POKT liquidity on DEXes.
PocketDAO:	Community that governs the protocol and treasury.
The Pocket Network Foundation (PNF):	Provides management and sets strategic direction.
Grant Contributors:	Build tools and services to enhance the ecosystem.

Together, they empower developers with access to the most reliable, performant, and cost-effective data.

The potential use cases are wide-ranging. Developers can tap into blockchain data without running their own infrastructure. Researchers can query global geospatial datasets without going through commercial platforms. AI projects can connect to open-source language models (LLMs) directly, without routing through big tech APIs. And because the registry is permissionless, new services can be added by anyone, expanding the network’s capabilities over time.

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The following articles will focus on getting you up and running fast - but a “Network Agent” is not the same as “Network Participant”. You, a person, have your own goals, talents and desires and therefore a different set of expectations and needs than most other users - and that’s by design...