OGAudit Web3 Research: @POKTnetwork $POKT - Universal Data Fabric Ambitions Meeting a Fresh All Time Low?
Pocket Network’s Proof of Relay model rewards node operators for servicing data requests across 50+ supported blockchains with token minting directly proportional to relay volume:
- Programmable deflation via net burn per relay cycle is designed to tie supply directly to network usage but a 2023 forum analysis flagged persistent negative real returns for node operators, meaning many sell rewards just to cover operating costs, creating structural sell pressure independent of price action.
- Recent exchange listings on Upbit, Bitget, WEEX and MEXC Futures expanded liquidity access and the Foundation onboarded market maker Wintermelt but Upbit has required temporary deposit/withdrawal suspensions during network upgrades (April 2025, March 2026), disrupting arbitrage during precisely the periods liquidity matters most.
- The Shannon upgrade (June 2025) and Phoenix v2 aim to cut relay costs by 30-75% and enable permissionless gateway creation, reframing Pocket beyond blockchain only RPC into a broader data relay layer that could serve AI model inference requests and general Web2 API calls, a significant expansion of the addressable market if it lands.
Is the Shannon/Phoenix pivot toward AI and Web2 API relay volume a genuinely larger market than blockchain RPC alone enough to reverse a token that just hit a fresh all time low or does the node operator profitability problem mean POKT’s tokenomics work against price recovery regardless of how successful the technical expansion is?
Category: Infrastructure
Coin Name: $POKT
Circulating Supply: 2.33B
Market Cap: $18.5M
Market Cap Rank: #724
OG (Trust) Score: 41.78
OG Score Rank: #102/954
Reviewed by 7 OG Auditors.
See the Social Audit with Reviews by crypto OG’s and more on the $POKT Coin page: ogaudit(.)com/crypto/pocket-network-pokt
https://t.co/wKHPXYUcZ0
