Resilience and Open Web Acceleration
Pocket Network is accelerating its promise of a more resilient and open web with new technical leadership and a "full-stack solution" approach to infrastructure development. Pocket Network, a leading provider of decentralized infrastructure for Web3 applications, announced it has reached the next stage in its development ecosystem, following the successful completion of the Shannon Upgrade, a massive technical and community milestone delivered in partnership with its core technical contributor, Grove.
With the Shannon upgrade fully built, launched, and battle-tested, Grove will conclude its role as the centralized service and core protocol development arm to focus on its own next generation of Web3 technologies, many of which are expected to continue integrating with the Pocket ecosystem.
"We've been working with the community all year to prepare for broad decentralization of both access and development on the protocol," said Chris "Jinx" Jenkins, Director for Pocket Network. "This successful transition proves the resiliency of the network and unlocks new avenues for growth and innovation."
Shannon Upgrade Milestones and Future Focus
The Shannon upgrade marked a significant milestone for Pocket Network, encompassing a comprehensive migration of the chain, token, and RPC infrastructure. With the transition successfully completed, network operations have resumed under standard conditions. The project now enters its next development phase, with a focus on growth, broader ecosystem contributions, and enhanced decentralization.
Grove, historically the legacy, centralized, for-profit technical partner to the Pocket Network Foundation, has been instrumental in the network's foundational development and the successful rollout of the Shannon upgrade. Now, having achieved this mission and secured the network's stability, Grove will shift its focus to building new technologies and products that can integrate with Pocket, rather than continuing core protocol contributions.
“We are incredibly proud of what we built with the Shannon Upgrade, which enabled permissionless demand, automated mint/burn tokenomics, and generalized data transport, bringing the original vision for Pocket to life. With that foundation in place, we are excited to move further up the Pocket stack by combining stablecoin payments, the emerging x402 standard for agent micropayments, automation through MCP, and attribution standards that tell agents who to pay, meeting this crucial moment where AI agents need a way to reward the humans and services they depend on,” said Arthur Sabintsev, Grove’s CEO.
Decentralized Engineering and New Leadership
Pocket Network’s unwavering commitment to providing a smooth and uninterrupted experience for Web3 builders remains unchanged. As part of returning to a decentralized open-source engineering model, the Pocket Network Foundation is bringing on new and returning technical leadership for core network maintenance and development, and to guide community engineering efforts.
The network’s deep RPC supply and redundancy are already being maintained by a growing, diverse group of node operators, including key contributors like DevDAO Cloud, Pokt.ai, and others. These operators are ensuring service remains smooth and fully decentralized.
Pocket Network’s core team continues to innovate through strategic partnerships, such as the ongoing collaboration with Raid Guild, and a packed product roadmap heading into 2026.
Otto Vargas, a skilled software developer and engineer with a deep knowledge of decentralized infrastructure who has been with Pocket Network for many years, recently joined the Foundation as its new Head of Protocol. He will be a valuable addition to the team and is primed to hit the ground running as Pocket Network enters its next phase.
While the core development relationship with Grove is changing, Pocket Network's mission to build deep, technical infrastructure for Web3 is not. The focus is now on building and partnering across the Web3 ecosystem to satisfy the ever-expanding needs of builders.
Upcoming Initiatives
The Foundation’s upcoming initiatives include:
- •AI/LLM-Consumable API & RPC: Developing new interfaces to make decentralized data readily available for next-generation AI and Large Language Models.
- •Decentralized Full-Stack Integrations: Forging technical and ecosystem integrations with leaders in decentralized storage and compute to offer a full decentralized Web3 stack across all involved partners.
About Pocket Network
Pocket Network is a decentralized blockchain data platform that provides access to blockchain data for Web3 decentralized applications (dApps). It acts as a relay network, connecting applications to full nodes (which store and process blockchain data.) Pocket uses a native cryptocurrency, POKT, to facilitate this process, creating a marketplace where node providers can earn rewards for servicing application requests.