On the 18th of June, 2021, Michael O’Rourke, the Founder of POKT Network was live on Seascape Seaside Talk #8, to provide the community with insights on their recent partnership with Seascape, and also attend to the questions and queries provided by Community members. The session was moderated by Kerel Verwaerde, CMO of Seascape Network.
Telegram AMA Session: Live Question by Moderator
Kerel — SO Rourke, let’s start by introducing yourself a bit and what POKT is and does.
Michael O’Rourke —
Thanks for having me. My name is Michael O’Rourke and I have been in crypto since 2013 when I first got into bitcoin. My background is in iOS development and in late 2016 my cofounders and I started playing around with smart contracts on Ethereum where we discovered the the problem that Pocket solves.
We found that there was a central point of failure for infrastructure in all of blockchains. We can’t have decentralized networks yet points above the stack with the risk of platform capture by few entities. Additionally it’s incredibly expensive to run blockchain nodes in the cloud. We designed Pocket to incentivize full nodes for all blockchains and to provide significantly more efficient and inexpensive infrastructure for applications.
Pocket is it’s own, application specific blockchain like Seascape, except instead of gaming, it’s focus is purely on providing sustainable, decentralized and reliable infrastructure for other blockchains. We launched about 10 months ago. Developers use Pocket to build out applications without worrying about running full nodes themselves.
We are doing about 4m — 6m requests a day on the network for production Ethereum and POKT applications. We have over 5,000 validators on the network — I believe we are the largest tendermint based network of nodes in the world. We have an incredible diversity of setups with people running nodes in the cloud, in their homes and in local data centers globally.
Kerel — Now most of the hype in blockchain comes to DeFi and NFT, and it has truly change the relationship we have with assets and money. What do you think of the future of DeFi and what role does POKT have in it?
Michael O’Rourke —
In the future, Defi will really just be known as finance. As DeFi scales to a truly global set of users, the need for data and the cost of infrastructure will increase exponentially. Pocket will enable this infrastructure to scale in a cost-effective and censorship resistant manner.
We also will live in a multi blockchain world. As Seascape has expanded to multiple blockchains, we’ll see the same happen across the board. Pocket provides one single entry point to all of these with little effort
Kerel — Could you elaborate on how POKT will work accross blockchains and the advantages it may have over its competitors?
Michael O’Rourke —
POKT is a middleware protocol that relays requests to full nodes. Currently, centralized infrastructure providers must run on the cloud to support the scale that they operate at. So, developers are not only paying rent to services like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, but they are also paying rent to the centralized infrastructure provider who is running a business.
Pocket removes both of those from the equation, making infrastructure several multiples more cost effective. Additionally, developers are relying on one single provider. In pocket, If a node goes down, there are 5,000 more ready to replace it, creating a much more reliable experience for applications like Seascape.
Kerel — Could you give us an example of how POKT works maybe using Seascape and why it is the best solution for our community?
Michael O’Rourke —
Pocket helps ensure that while playing games on seascape, ever player will have extremely reliable and scalable infrastructure. Especially when it comes to trickier chains like BSC, Pocket can provide stronger guarantees on this reliability.