What Is Pocket Network (POKT)? The Decentralized RPC Token

Pocket Network is a decentralized RPC network that pays its node operators in POKT, and its on-chain supply grew by about 50.9 million tokens after a February 2026 switch built to shrink it. Tokens claimed from old Morse-era accounts outweighed the burn from that switch to the late-October close.

POKT closed late October at $0.007998 on CoinMarketCap, up 9.05% on the day. Its $3.55 million of volume that day ran about 6.6 times the average of the 30 days before. Under that price sat about 319 million POKT that old Morse accounts had yet to claim, a balance the trackers counted as circulating and the chain did not.

Pocket Network (POKT) at a Glance

What Is Pocket Network (POKT)?

Pocket Network sells access to blockchain data. Apps and wallets send RPC requests through gateways to independent operators called suppliers, and the protocol pays those suppliers in POKT for each request it settles. An RPC request is the call that reads a wallet balance or submits a transaction to a chain.

The network launched in July 2020 on a chain called Morse, and Pocket's tokenomics page says 650 million POKT came into existence at that launch. The same page says genesis vesting is complete, with "no further cliff or vesting unlocks".

Pocket moved to Shannon, a chain of its own built with the Cosmos SDK, in June 2025. The first Morse holder claimed a balance there on 3 June 2025.

That design makes Pocket a data network of the DePIN kind, the model laid out in what DePIN is and how it works, where independent operators supply the hardware and a token pays them.

What Is Pocket Network Crypto Used For?

POKT does two main jobs on the network. Applications burn it to pay for the requests they send, and operators stake it to serve those requests and collect the rewards that follow.

POKT staking sets the entry price for operators. A supplier needed at least 59,500 POKT staked at the late-October close, and Pocket's docs put the unbonding period at about 20 days. Supplier stakes made up 14.56% of on-chain supply that day, and validators' bonded stake another 5.08%.

Pricing runs in dollars. Pocket's product page fixes compute units at $1 per billion, so a service priced at 100,000 compute units per request earns $0.0001 a call whatever POKT trades at. The same page pitches the network to builders of data services for AI agents.

If you build apps, a Pocket endpoint is one of many crypto APIs and SDKs for reading chain data, and gateways handle the POKT side of each call.

Why Is POKT Trending?

The late-October rise capped three heavy days of trading. CoinMarketCap logged $3.87 million of POKT volume two days before the jump, the biggest day of the week to the close. The price then fell 5.66% before the 9.05% gain.

A 9.05% day was common enough for POKT in 2026, and eight other days of the year to late October gained more. The biggest was a 62.92% jump on 3 February. The late-October close stood 60.83% under the highest close of 2026 to late October, $0.02042 in February, and 19.85% above the August low.

Pocket's forum and news page carry no announcement dated to the day of the move, and neither do its GitHub release notes. Before the move, the newest forum topic and the newest release notes both dated from mid-October, and the newest news post from August 2026.

How Does Pocket Network's Mint and Burn Work?

Shannon started with a simple rule, burn equals mint. When applications consumed relays, the protocol burned the POKT they paid and minted the same amount back as rewards, according to Pocket's PIP-41 page.

PIP-41 changed the ratio. The proposal passed unanimously on 3 January 2026, a network upgrade went live on 10 February and the mint ratio dropped from 1 to 0.975 on 11 February. From then to the late-October close, the protocol minted back 97.5 POKT for every 100 it burned, and the other 2.5 POKT never came into existence.

Fixed shares divided the minted POKT at the close. The supplier that served the request took 79% and the service's owner 2.5%, while validators took 14% and the DAO 4.5%.

So every settled relay is a small case of what it means to burn crypto, paid for by the apps that send the traffic.

Is POKT's Supply Really Declining?

Between the February 2026 switch to a 97.5% mint ratio and the late-October close, POKT's on-chain supply grew by about 50.9 million tokens, because claims of old Morse-era balances minted more POKT than the burn removed.

Those were 493 claims that minted 52.48 million POKT over that stretch, while everything else on the chain removed a net 1.585 million. Claims outweighed the net removal 33 to 1, and the total rose 2.54%.

The burn side showed up daily in the month to late October. Supply outside claims fell on all 31 of those days, by a median of about 13,340 POKT a day. Yet 16 claims in that month added 1.668 million POKT and left the supply up 0.06%.

CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko both counted about 2.375 billion POKT as circulating in late October, while the chain itself held about 2.056 billion, and the gap of about 319 million was Morse-era balances not yet claimed. Those balances sat in 42,896 of the 57,764 Morse accounts at the close, 74.26% of them, and the chain's migration settings set no end date for claiming them.

Pocket's docs tell a different story. The PIP-41 page says the 2.5% cut is "permanently reducing total supply with every relay served", and the Morse migration page calls the Morse-to-Shannon migration "finished". The chain's record for the month to late October shows a burn on every day and a migration module that kept taking claims.

Any market cap built on the trackers' count, about 15.5% above the chain's own total in late October, includes those unclaimed balances. That gap makes what fully diluted market cap means a live question for POKT.

Method: supply is the chain's bank total of upokt at the last block before the February switch and at each day's last block, read through Pocket's archive API. Claims come from all 57,764 Morse claim records, summed by the block where each landed, and the flow outside claims is the net supply change minus those claims.

Who Controls Pocket Network's Parameters?

Two addresses held the keys at the late-October close. The chain's governance module had given them 73 grants that run to the year 2500. The grants let either address change tokenomics parameters or push software upgrades on the module's behalf, and they cover Morse account recoveries too.

Pocket's governance parameters page gives that role to the Pocket Network Foundation. Its line reads "On MainNet, PNF acts as the authorized grantee to execute parameter changes on behalf of the DAO."

The PIP-41 page adds that the mint ratio "cannot be changed unilaterally by PNF or any other actor" and that future changes require a governance vote. On chain, all 73 grants were generic authorizations with no condition attached at the close, so a vote bound the grantees through process and the grants carried the technical power.

Is Pocket Network a Good Investment?

Pocket Network runs a live relay market, and POKT is a bet that relay demand will burn tokens faster than old Morse balances reach the chain. The late-October record names three risks that the price chart doesn't show.

The claim backlog. Any of the 42,896 Morse accounts still unclaimed at the late-October close could claim while claiming stayed switched on, and each claim adds new POKT to the chain's supply. The largest unclaimed balance alone was 100.1 million POKT, and the 23 unclaimed accounts holding a million POKT or more held half the backlog.

One large single-key account. An unlabelled account held 849.5 million POKT, 41.31% of on-chain supply, at the late-October close. The chain records it as an ordinary account controlled by one key, and its holding was worth about $6.79 million at that close, almost twice that day's CoinMarketCap volume. The ten largest accounts, the two staking modules among them, held 77.09%.

Grantee power over the rules. Two addresses held grants at the late-October close that let them change the mint ratio or the chain's software. Pocket's docs promise a vote first, and the grants themselves carried no such condition.

A claim deadline for Morse balances, a public owner for the largest account and parameter changes moved behind an on-chain vote would each lower those risks.

How to Buy POKT

POKT comes in two forms, and the one you buy decides what you can do with it.

1. Decide which form you need. Native POKT lives on Shannon at addresses that start with pokt1, and staking or claiming a Morse balance needs it.

2. On Phemex, POKT trades on Phemex Onchain as the Wormhole-bridged token on Solana.

3. Check the token's mint address and the pool's depth before you confirm a swap, and size your order to the depth you see.

4. To stake, move bridged POKT back to native POKT and follow Pocket's staking guide, which lists staking pools for holders below the supplier minimum.

5. If you held POKT on Morse and never claimed it, the balance was waiting on Shannon at the late-October close, with claiming switched on.

Phemex lists futures on bitcoin and other major coins. Futures use leverage, and a leveraged position is closed automatically if losses reach its margin.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Pocket Network crypto?

Pocket Network is a decentralized network of node operators who serve blockchain data and RPC requests and earn POKT for the work. Its token dates from the July 2020 mainnet launch, and Pocket moved to its own Cosmos SDK chain in June 2025.

Is Pocket Network legit?

Pocket Network is a working network with a mainnet live since July 2020 and its code published on GitHub. Its risks lie in the unclaimed Morse balances and in the grants over its parameters.

How does POKT staking work?

Operators stake native POKT to serve relays and earn most of the rewards minted back after each burn. Pocket's staking guide adds staking pools and node runners for smaller holders, and a supplier's unbonding takes about 20 days.

Where can I buy POKT?

Phemex Onchain carries POKT as a Wormhole-bridged token on Solana. Native POKT on Pocket's own chain is the version that stakes, so holders of bridged POKT move back to it before staking.

What is the POKT price?

POKT closed at $0.007998 on CoinMarketCap at the late-October 2026 close, 9.05% above the day before, on $3.55 million of volume.

Bottom Line

One Morse claim in early October added about 573,700 POKT, roughly 43 days of the typical burn in the month to late October. Until the 319 million POKT unclaimed at the late-October close reach the chain or claims get an end date, POKT's supply answers to old holders more than to relay demand.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.