The Relay Service

Some forms of collaborative spatial computing, such as shared AR experiences and games, require real-time synchronous communication. This is essential for use cases where participants need to continuously inform each other of their relative poses, or other such spatial data describing a rapidly evolving environment.

Low latency is of particular importance to real-time spatial collaboration. In fact, industry experts know that XR experiences require lower latency than any mainstream internet application. Ideally, information needs to pass between devices within the time it takes to generate a single frame, and frame rates of 120Hz or more are necessary to provide smooth experiences.

This in turn means that collaborative spatial computing needs average latencies of 8ms or less, which is incredibly difficult to achieve reliably at a global scale with traditional Web2 cloud infrastructure.

This is where decentralized infrastructure has the potential to truly outcompete incumbent solutions.

The posemesh networking Relay service is a decentralized substrate of servers, designed to make use of spare compute and bandwidth in ubiquitous devices. It also serves as an important bridge to participants that wish to perform work but are not publicly addressable on the internet.

The posemesh Relay service was previously called Hagall.

There are many millions of computers connected to unmetered internet, and they are more than capable of sharing their free bandwidth to facilitate real-time interaction.

There are also many millions of computers that would be capable of rendering services for others if they were addressable on the internet. The Relay service helps expose these machines to the network, so that they can contribute their resources and earn rewards.

This unique feature of the posemesh means that it has a higher total addressable substrate, benefitting the economy and service quality.

Allowing machines to trustlessly participate in the posemesh in exchange for rewards increases their utilization rate, and helps lower the latency of peer communication.

The Relay node is lightweight enough to run even on IoT devices like routers or smart TVs, or as a background process on almost any computer.

The Relay allows these devices to lend a percentage of their spare compute and unmetered to internet to serving hyperlocal networking requests, or passing messages to an unexposed participant, earning tokenized reputation rewards and network fees from the protocol's periodic mint for doing so.

We envision a future where over a million computers participate in the networking service, providing lower latency at lower cost than any conceivable Web2 or centralized offering.

Services provided:

The posemesh Relay service routes posemesh traffic over a decentralized network of hyperlocal servers and microcomputers.

This allows for lower latency, more precise collaborative spatial computing, and a greater substrate that includes unexposed participants.

Rewards earned:

Performance Rewards are issued according to how much work the Relay has performed.

‍Participation Rewards are paid out of the Foundation's treasury to ensure the provisioning of Relay nodes in areas of strategic importance.

Token utility:

Relay service operators stake the token to establish a reputation to be eligible to earn rewards. The reputation can slashed by the protocol if the operator fails to keep quality standards.