The Graph Network will provide dApp developers with the first global and easily searchable index of blockchain data
The Graph Network, an indexing protocol for organising and efficiently accessing data from blockchains and storage networks, announced the launch of its mainnet yesterday. Developers using the network no longer have to rely on centralised servers and proprietary infrastructure as they can now search, find, publish and use the public data necessary for building decentralised applications (DApps) with ease.
The Graph uses public and open APIs called subgraphs to make dApps more accessible. It has already deployed more than 3,400 subgraphs for Web3 and DeFi applications built on Ethereum, IPFS and POA – these include Uniswap, Aave, Synthetix, Balancer and Gnosis.
Synthetix CTO Justin J Moses commented, “From the first moment I started working on The Graph I was hooked – here was a way to meet the needs of modern data analysis on top of the decentralized web of the future. Their mission is ambitious: to reshape our relationship to the data we consume. Yet if anyone’s able to tackle such a challenge, it’s The Graph.”
The Graph community is made up of subgraph developers, delegators, curators and indexers. Over 1,600 people have successfully completed the curator program to learn how to identify high-quality subgraphs, more than 200 indexers deployed nodes on the testnet and over 4,500 delegators can contribute to the network by delegating their stake to indexers. Also, usage of the hosted service surged this year from 1 billion monthly queries in June to more than 10 billion in November.
The Graph’s Co-Founder, Yaniv Tal, said, “It’s surreal that after years of hard work, our vision for a global decentralized indexing and API layer for Web3 has become real. We really believe in decentralization and the launch of The Graph Network is a major milestone for enabling humans to cooperate and organize in a decentralized way.”
The Graph has begun distributing their native token, GRT. About 20% of GRT will go to The Graph Foundation, about 2.5% to loans for independent ecosystem partners, about 2% to educational programs and about 1% to grants for contributors building on The Graph.
Apart from the GRT handed out in the public sale, most of the rest will go to participants in the network – indexers will earn on-chain indexing rewards and query fees, delegators can stake their GRT to indexers to earn a portion of the on-chain rewards. Curators staking GRT on a chosen subgraph will be incentivised to curate the highest quality subgraphs by earning a portion of its query fees.