Today, we’ve rebranded Pocket Network Inc. to Grove.

When we first incorporated Pocket Network Inc. (PNI), we were the driving force of the Pocket Network project and ecosystem. Our team built a protocol with the vision for entrepreneurs and developers to be able to access and use decentralized infrastructure via a truly decentralized network of full nodes in a permissionless fashion. Pocket Network the protocol grew and, in line with the vision we all built at the start, continued and continues to decentralize.

Until today, there was Pocket Network Inc.(PNI), Pocket Network Foundation (PNF), Pocket DAO, and of course, the Pocket Network protocol. This has no doubt been confusing for everyone in the ecosystem. At the start of this year we hit an important milestone with Pocket Network Foundation (PNF) formally separating from PNI.

We’ve continued to build out the business, and as we begin to see new gateways come online, the distinction between the Pocket Network protocol, and PNI the company will continue to diverge. I am nearly always referred to as the CEO of Pocket Network. This has never been the case. I have always been CEO of Pocket Network Inc., the company that has built and maintains the network (alongside the community). As such, it was critical at this juncture to more clearly define the distinction between the company and the protocol.

We are excited to celebrate the evolution of Pocket Network and to share our excitement about the future of what will now be known as Grove.

So why Grove?

I fundamentally believe that most, if not all of the world’s economic movement will be coordinated by open source blockchains over the coming decades.

For the first time in human history we have the ability to leverage internet native coordination technology to build better institutions. We have the ability to improve the human condition by creating the economic might and influence to incentivize other institutions, namely governments and the largest corporations, to adopt web3 technology and create opportunities for the world regardless of race, creed, or religion.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are already institutions, and we will have many other protocols begin to rival the existing ones. Grove, as the largest web3 native infrastructure business, is very much a call to leverage these technologies to improve the world we live in by creating opportunities for as many people as possible.

“...solarpunk ideas, and solarpunk technologies, need not remain imaginary, and I indulge a hope of someday living in a solarpunk world.” - From steampunk to solar punk

‍The solarpunk movement is fundamentally an optimistic future, where people leverage the tools of technology to have better lives and live closer to the world we interact with every day. Grove is inspired by that concept.

Grove is the path to unlocking a multi gateway Pocket Network.

We have bootstrapped a supply side that are world class community contributors and node runners. For Pocket Network to sustain and become an institution, we need to activate the demand side of the network and create a true flywheel. Until now, Grove has been the only gateway on the network, which has been a significant growth inhibitor.

Grove will be open sourcing its own Portal over the next year to activate the demand-side of the network. It is clear we are going to live in a world with hundreds (or thousands) of gateways, all solving different needs for developers. Our goal with grove is to make it as easy as possible for existing gateway providers or new gateway providers to build lucrative gateway business on top of Pocket Network.

As the space grows and continues to force people to focus across verticals, the same will happen for gateways. I see significant opportunities in the future for people to build out:

1. Vertical specific gateways (GameFi, DeFi, Social, Account abstraction, MEV, etc)
2. Ecosystem specific gateways (Cosmos, Polkadot, Celestia, etc)
3. Country or region specific gateways
4. Application specific gateways

The limiting factor here is just how much economic coordination will be done by these blockchains. The more value coordinated, the more space there is for gateways.

The vision for any developer or entrepreneur using the Grove stack will be for a very small team to easily install a package on a server that enables them to build out their RPC business right out the gate. Here are a few things you should be able to get right out of the box:

1. Dispatching
2. Quality of service
3. Endpoint creation
4. Basic user management
5. Basic UI/UX

Being open source, developers can choose to build out additional features yourself by contributing to the core repository. Grove is building a business too, and we will look to enable other gateway entrepreneurs with the API’s and services you most need to build and scale your business. This perfectly aligns Grove with the broader Network’s goals in enabling others and create as robust an ecosystem of demand side gateways as possible.

The new home of Grove is grove.city - but why .city?

First, and pragmatically, Grove is a 5 letter domain that is difficult to obtain. Second, and importantly, the .city TLD highlights the importance of the open source coordination technology that this company is built on. We are enabling a global network of physical infrastructure. Putting a flag in the ground with this TLD will consistently reinforce the global community and coordination the software we build enables.

We are building an institution that can impact the world on the level of cities, countries or the largest businesses. We want to reinforce the importance of the people, the places and the network that we are all interacting with through the .city TLD.

What about Pocket Network?

Nothing is changing. Pocket Network is not rebranding. Grove will continue to build out and depend on the core Pocket Network protocol. It is important to create the distinction between the protocol and the companies that make up the larger ecosystem. The entire business we are building is still focused on Pocket Network. The core protocol R&D team that launched the protocol is now working within Grove to improve the protocol in concert with the larger community.

Wrapping up

Grove is a place where web3 developers can build in the shade, without the distractions of web2 technology or tradeoffs of using web3 infrastructure (BuildInTheShade.com, if you will). Historically, it has been incredibly difficult for web3 developers to access reliable, performant, and cost-effective infrastructure. Grove is the first web3 native company, built on the protocol Pocket Network that finally enables this ease of access. We continue to prove this out at a scale with peaks of over two billion requests a day coming from over 25,000 developers.

Our vision is for Grove to become the portal for web3 entrepreneurs and developers. While we have focused on serving RPC today, in time we will be supporting many other interfaces. The web3 middleware stack is starting to mature with storage protocols, privacy protocols, indexing protocols, and even CDN’s. This will require a place for developers to make use of these technologies in an accessible, secure, and reliable place - their Grove.

As a company and a protocol that has been built through open source, we expect to begin paving a path forward for other infrastructure companies that want to build on top of web3. With Pocket Network, we have seen what’s possible at scale, and we anticipate many others will too.

With each new gateway using the Grove stack, we will build out a thriving ecosystem that lives on through Pocket Network.

Michael

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