Skip to main content

Pocket Network Actors

Table of Contents ​

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 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​

warning

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

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