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The partnership will enable transactions on Fuse Network to be reliably relayed through the Pocket decentralized transaction infrastructure platform.
Decentralization is by far the biggest advantage of, and rallying cry behind, crypto. The fact that no single entity controls the adding of new transactions and the ledger explains why so many people have embraced it, despite its novelty and technical nature. However, the decentralized nature of some of the leading crypto protocols is threatened by the fact that, while transaction validators generally face significant incentives to maintain blockchains, the no-less-important non-validating full nodes do not.
The difference between validators and other full nodes is that the latter do not participate in the process of adding new blocks to the ledger, usually referred to as consensus. However, they play two very important roles. First, they maintain up-to-date copies of the blockchain ledger. They also verify the incoming transactions and relay them to other full nodes, and eventually validators, for including into new blocks.
However, on major blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the incentives for maintaining full nodes are weak. Unlike validators, simple full node operators are generally not rewarded by the protocol. This has led to a situation in which most of the full nodes used by dApps today are either maintained by their teams or increasingly outsourced to centralized cloud providers such as Infura and Alchemy. While this shortcut is undoubtedly convenient it is clearly suboptimal from the decentralization perspective.
The Fuse team takes platform decentralization very seriously and would like to ensure that there are enough independent non-validator nodes processing transactions on the platform. Hence, we are thrilled to announce the upcoming integration with Pocket Network.
How Pocket Network Supercharges Full Nodes
Pocket Network can be thought of as a decentralized peer infrastructure layer for any compatible blockchain. It incentivizes the maintenance of Validator Nodes that empowers dApps to interface with decentralized networks without a single point of failure. Pocket Network is decentralized because the information about the transactions relayed through it is stored on the Pocket blockchain-powered by Tendermint consensus.
In simple terms, a dApp will ping a Dispatch Node, letting it know the blockchain it is trying to connect to. The dApp is then paired with 5 Validator Nodes who are running a full node on the desired blockchain. Each request from the dApp is routed to all 5 blockchain nodes, through the Validator Nodes, and the responses are sent back. The dApp then takes the 5 responses and finds the rational majority, ensuring they never have to trust a single node.
Pocket Validator Nodes stake POKT token to ensure desirable behavior and they are rewarded with newly minted POKT for each completed relay. A Validator Node can run full nodes on several blockchains at the same time. This enables the existence of multiple independent full nodes on the serviced blockchains being run professionally and reliably, just like they are by centralized cloud providers.
Applications taking advantage of Pocket Network also need to stake POKT. The amount that they stake will determine the number of relays that they can request each hour. At the current stage of development of POKT Network, the supported applications will have the right to a certain number of relays per hour indefinitely, as long as they continue staking, and they can withdraw their POKT at any time.
How Fuse will Integrate Pocket Network
Fuse’s integration with Pocket Network will proceed in stages. Initially, Pocket Network will provide Fuse applications with access to the services of more than 2,000 of its nodes in the Ethereum ecosystem. This will make the functioning of the Fuse-Ethereum bridge more efficient and less expensive as it will not have to run an Ethereum full node itself. Pocket Network will also set up a Fuse node as the first step towards the integration of Fuse as a fully supported platform. In the future, this will boost the decentralization of the Fuse backbone.
Finally, in order to promote the cross-utilization of the two platforms, a token swap may be conducted in the near future. Among other things, this will enable Fuse applications to get access to Pocket Network’s services through staking POKT.
Commenting on the collaboration,
“We are beyond excited for Pocket Network to begin providing infrastructure for Fuse Network — a decentralized partnership that will power their growth in the years to come. Our missions are incredibly aligned through Fuse providing a platform for end-users to design local economies and drive access to crypto for people around the world. By providing infrastructure for Fuse, Pocket will drive decentralized, cost-effective, and private infrastructure for the entire network and all of its users.”
Michael O’Rourke, CEO at Pocket Network
About Pocket Network
Pocket is a cost-effective decentralized infrastructure protocol that empowers applications to interface with blockchain nodes with industry-leading resiliency and privacy. Pocket addresses the paradox of applications having to rely on centralized infrastructure to connect to decentralized networks. It was started in 2017 and has since grown to a team of 25 full-time contributors.
The Fuse team is excited by the integration with Pocket Network and the boost it will give to Fuse’s decentralization credentials.
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