A Future With Deflationary $POKT

More relays = fewer tokens.

Pocket Network’s Shannon upgrade has given the protocol a balanced economy. Minting and burning are tightly coupled: Gateways buy and burn $POKT to route traffic, while minting rewards node operators, sequencers, and the DAO. At present, mint and burn are roughly in balance.

But this equilibrium is by choice - the DAO holds the keys. The design of Shannon makes it possible for $POKT to become deflationary over time and distribute value by driving its price up instead of minting more supply.

Pocket’s economics ties supply burn to real usage. As more relays flow through the network, burns scale linearly with traffic. Minting, by contrast, is governed by parameters set by the DAO. That means demand can grow faster than supply — and when it does, $POKT supply would begin to contract without adverse effects to the incentives on the network, much on the contrary:

The mechanics behind a deflationary future:

• Relay volume can scale uncapped, while mint is capped by protocol rules.

• DAO may vote to slow emissions as operator margins stabilize with rising token price.

• Gateway fees could be raised in the future, amplifying burn per relay.

• Surge pricing and dynamic fees will add more elasticity on the burn side.

Together, these mechanics create the conditions for a flywheel where higher usage doesn’t just grow the network — it shrinks supply.

What deflation would mean for agents

• For gateways: every relay you route strengthens the economic base and increases the value of the $POKT you need to operate.

• For operators: rewards become scarcer over time, but more valuable as supply contracts.

• For the community: a network aligned around true usage, not inflationary subsidies.

A model scenario

Today, Pocket serves about 53 million relays per day, burning ~38,000 $POKT and minting roughly the same. If traffic were to triple — say 150 million relays per day — while mint parameters stayed constant, daily burns would climb above 100,000 $POKT. Minting would still sit near 38,000. That means the network would retire ~62,000 more $POKT per day than it creates — flipping the system deflationary and driving the value higher by economic fundamentals.

If used wisely by the community, these primitives would lead us to a network where growth leads not to runaway inflation or commodification of the utility token, but to an anti-fragile protocol where every new relay makes the system stronger and more adaptable. The conditions are set for a future where the Pocket Network can influence $POKT’s value due to providing actual utility and forming a real, living, thriving data economy.

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Now that we’ve seen how Pocket’s economics can evolve toward deflation, the next step is to explore the practical side — how each piece of the network operates, and where you can plug in to shape its future.