Pocket Network Actors

Overview

Pocket Network protocol is composed of both onchain and offchain actors.

There are 3 onchain actors:

• Applications: End-users or clients that request services from the network.

• Suppliers: Provide services and resources to applications.

• Gateways: Route and facilitate requests between applications and suppliers.

There are 2 offchain actors:

• RelayMiners: Offchain services that process and relay requests between network participants.

• PATH Gateways: Specialized offchain gateways that optimize routing and performance.

onchain

offchain

Application

Gateway

Supplier

PATH Gateway

Relay Miner

User

Actors

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Onchain Actors

Onchain actors are part of the Pocket Network distributed ledger (the "Web3" part of Pocket).

• Think of onchain actors as:

  • Records, registrations, or pieces of state at a specific point in time

  • Each has an address, account, balance, and often a stake

  • They exist only on the blockchain and represent the current state of the network

Risks & Misbehavior

This is an open work in progress and an active area of research.

• Gateways:

  • Risks: Intentional overservicing

  • Misbehavior: Low volume exploit

  • Note: Onchain, gateways are mainly a registry to track gateways and application delegations. It's hard to distinguish requests sent by gateways from those sent by applications acting directly.

• Applications:

  • Risks: Insufficient funds to pay for services, intentional overservicing

  • Misbehavior: Low volume exploit

• Suppliers:

  • Risks: Service/quality degradation

  • Misbehavior: No or low quality responses, invalid or missing proofs

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Offchain Actors

Offchain actors are all the operators and services that make up Pocket Network (the "Web2" part of Pocket).

• Think of offchain actors as:

  • Servers, processes, or clients

  • They run the business logic offchain and interact with the blockchain

  • Offchain actors execute logic that is verified onchain and drives state transitions