By Nathan Ferguson
The Graph is one of the leading decentralized systems, which is used to run the queries and indexing of the desired data from Blockchains. You can think of it as an easy way to look up information about what is going on in the Ethereum blockchain by making queries against meta-data associated with transactions, rather than having to read every event stored in state storage. The Graph has been developed to be developer-friendly, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. The fact that it’s decentralized means that you are not locked into using it through any single UI or front end.
The Graph is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token that has a decentralized, open protocol to allow developers a secure and efficient way to store and access data. All the data stored through The Graph platform will be encrypted with state-of-the-art cryptography. The Graph aims to provide privacy while simultaneously enhancing transparency in the ever-evolving decentralized landscape.
A graph is a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain that stores all of its data in a large multi-index database table. The current implementation uses Cassandra for this purpose, although it is possible to replace this with another storage engine. All of the data stored by Graph can be queried through Graph endpoints.
The database stores all of its data in one table, instead of several smaller ones. This makes it easier to ingest all events from contracts and allows for advanced search functionality without requiring additional infrastructure components. The Graph currently indexes events from contracts in Solidity. Let’s have a detailed look at the Graph review to find out its enriched features.
Graph networks
The Network of Graph is a group of Indexers, Delegators, and Curators that collectively feeds the data into Web3 applications.
The following list dives further into these components:
Indexers are users who stake their coins to run nodes on the network. They store part or all of external datasets within The Network of Graph are rewarded for being actively involved.
Curators have a stake in the network and have been voted into an active role by Indexers. The Curators will be tasked with verification duties to make sure the data is valid. They also verify that no malicious activity has occurred, such as hacking or tampering of datasets, and they may take on other responsibilities as well. Curators are active members of The Network of Graph and have been voted in by Indexers who have a stake in the network to be actively involved.
Delegators can stake tokens of GRT to delegate to a Curator they trust, thus helping protect their data from attacks while making a profit at the same time. They also get to vote in the Curators they prefer. Delegators are not actively involved in the network but have a stake in protecting their data, which comes with voting privileges when needed.
Indexers can stake their tokens of GRT to help store any part or all of external datasets within the Network of Graph, thus helping protect it from malicious attacks while making a profit at the same time. They can be rewarded for upholding network rules and verified if they are valid participants in the network.
Indexers and Delegators all hold GRT tokens, which make them stakeholders in The Network of Graph. This is what links their incentives with those of the other stakeholders involved in the secure storage and sharing of data.
Developers
Ethereum subgraphs are specialized subgraphs whose purpose is the indexification of mainnet of the Ethereum. They allow for better scalability by giving developers the ability to use subgraphs that are already pre-indexed, instead of working with raw blocks. The studio of subgraph allows users to easily create subgraphs, which are just specific implementations of eth-subgraph.
There are some interesting examples of the use of subgraphs that exist at the external edge of mainnet of the Ethereum. One such example is ENS (Ethereum Name Service). Users can utilize this platform to search for addresses, names, and hashes using an array of options instead of requiring developers to work with smart contracts directly.
Indexers
These are the entities that handle the aggregation of data from external sources. All third-party data via some API-like interface is sent to them, where they either fetch the data or store it in-house or provision an endpoint that returns the data to applications.
Indexers can be public, where each app can choose which one they send their queries to. Their availability can be measured by checking if queries return within certain timeframes. This is the expected normal use case, not all apps may able to be selective to which indexer they send queries to.
Indexers can also be private, where all queries must go to a single indexer. This is useful for apps that have high availability requirements. Indexers must able to handle the queries of all apps, which use them. This implies that apps can expect different types of responses to the same query.
There are two types of indexers: legacy and Lightning.
Legacy Indexer: Legacy indexers operate the node that has been operating as the indexing node since the inception of the network of Graph. This legacy asset has been previously awarded to one indexer but can be passed on to another.
Lightning Indexer: Lightning indexers are new indexers who can compete to be the public indexing node. More indexers will make the network perform better, but competition results in higher market prices for GRT.
An indexer does not have to follow the signal of curation but might miss rewards if they do not consider the curator criteria. Indexing rewards are a small percentage of the final reward for a very high-quality graph.
Curators
The Graph is creating a decentralized index of ecosystem of the web3.0. As part of that effort, they need a system that can tell them which data sources are worth indexing. They are calling this system curators.
A curator is an individual who checks the quality of subgraphs by correcting errors and flagging high-quality subgraphs that are submitted into the network. Curators also decide which subgraph versions to give signal or choose to go for the auto-migrate options for signaling, ensuring that new blocks will be generated only if enough curators signal on a specific version.
Curators will be a community of experts that will work with The Graph team to review and signal subgraphs. The approach they are taking to curation is similar to the way that Wikipedia editors work with volunteer contributors. The Graph will provide a basic framework for people to interact with, but the curators will provide the judgment.
The curve of expertise in web3 is wide. By making curation an open community effort, they are hoping that they can take advantage of a diverse set of perspectives to make The Graph as strong as possible.
Curators are financially rewarded for their service by earning shares of queries generated by signaled subgraphs and, in some instances, directly from edge requests. Curators also earn an additional bonus if they signal on the newest block before another validator or curator does.
Enriched Features
- Unique Utility
The protocol of Graph offers unique utility in the ability to access and understand data from the blockchain of Ethereum, which has been difficult for past protocols. To demonstrate this utility let’s take a look at how it can provide valuable information within two projects that have involved complex smart contracts: Uniswap and the Ape Club (BAYC). Within Uniswap there is a list of ERC20 token swaps. However, this information is merely kept as metadata on each token ID within the smart contract, making it difficult to understand what tokens are involved in those swaps. Through The protocol of Graph, you can see that there are 725 swaps made with a total value of 1.6899 ETH.
Let’s have a look at one more example. If you want to perform some operations of reading on a specific contract, in which you are going to perform the following processes
- To find out the owner name of an Ape
- Alternatively, to find out content URI based on specific ID
- To find out total supply
The above are the specific possible operations that can be performed in a smart contracts and the issue is that there are more real-world commands and operations to perform. Real-world operations may include the aggregation of the data, searching, relationships, and some non-trivial filtration, which are not even possible exactly. Moreover, when you want to search the apes, which is been, limited by some or more attributes you will not able to directly engage with that contract.
If anyone wants to get through this information, they have to make themselves able to have a look at every transfer, which is ever sent. They also should able to you can read the meta information from the ID of Token, hash of IPFS, and after getting that you have to aggregate all this. The decentralized applications can take more than multiple hours even several days to solve such queries.
You can even have the option to make your server and then you can process the transactions here. You can also add the data in its database and can run your query of your data using that API, which is built on it. However, in the end, it also has many problems such as heavy resources and requires maintenance. Moreover, you have to set the failure point, or even you can compromise the security keys, which are necessary for decentralization.
Moreover, chain reorganizations including the block, which are uncalled all not applicable for these procedures. In addition, such issues lead to take more time and it makes it very difficult to get the exact quires from the data of blockchain.
Graph (GRT) is a project that allows users to construct and publish subgraphs that make data open to anyone. Originating from Ethereum, It is one of the leading decentralized system, which is used to run the queries and to index the data from the Blockchains. It enables users to query data that would be hard to obtain normally.
The graph here plays a crucial role b solving all these problems by providing the system, which is decentralized. This decentralized system indexes the data of the blockchain and makes it allow search the data fastly and effectively. Here the GraphQl plays its role, which queries such APIs. They come with hosted service that performs all these same functions. Their decentralized protocol is also much more efficient to perform these functions. Graph node and implementation of open-source handles them both.
- Graph Tokenomics
The Graph is a decentralized platform that seeks to revolutionize the way that users interact with information, breaking the chains of today’s data sources. Instead, GRAPH will allow users to utilize a single token to access all of their data on any compatible source in real-time – astoundingly valuable for anyone looking for a streamlined, open experience. Over the 10 billion tokens created by The Graph and the most important part is that 4.72 billion of these tokens is its circulation supply.
Price of Graph
$0.5772 is the trading price of Graph until 12 January 2022 and the trading volume of its 24 hours is around about $95,110,708.
Price Prediction
The Graph is a blockchain infrastructure that will allow you to store and search data in a decentralized way. The team behind the project has announced an important update on the release date of their cryptocurrency.
At the moment it is not possible to accurately predict the price of each token. However, some factors can lead to high capital gains in the long term.
The GRAPH token will be used to pay for all transactions made on The Graph network. This means that as more people buy the token, the higher its value will be. Also, keep in mind that all members of Graph ecosystem are rewarded with GRAPH tokens for their work, making the token extremely important for everyone involved.
Web 3 projects are the future of the internet, as blockchain technology has evolved enough to be implemented into all branches of the existing internet infrastructure. With this said, many promising projects are emerging almost every day, but very few manage to be among the top 100 projects.
Moreover when the world in is the transition phase from web 2 to 3 Graph is been working to polish its features for the run of future. In addition, after such transition in the graph, it will affect the automatic influence on GRT token. This will break the mark of $5 when this GRT token will jump to Web 3. Thus, Web 3 will introduce such a decentralized platform in the market and will offer such connectivity that you have never seen before.
More than $27B is been saturated in Web 3 to produce the immersive interface by the leading institutional investors. Such technologies will boast the Graph and it will be an immersive rise in its price. Even Twitter and some other platforms are adopting Web 3 very earlier and this wave is going to be wave on high values in 2022.
GRT price prediction from February 2021 until 2025. In the beginning, the price for one Graph Token was $0.46, and then it went up to its high on $2.83 within February 2021. Since after, the token has come down to $1.17 in January 2022 and managed to reach $2.22 once again during May 2021. GRT’s price has fluctuating since then; however, the average price of this token is $0.56 nowadays. According to many cryptocurrency experts, GRT would reach its high again in 2021 and the Graph cryptocurrency could easily see $10 by 2025.
Conclusion
The Graph (also referred to as “GRT”) is a project that allows users and developers to construct subgraphs. Subgraphs are constructed with nodes, which represent one unique thing, e.g. an eth account address, a person or a transaction on the blockchain, and edges, which connect the nodes and represent some kind of connection between them.
Nodes can contain information on their own or connections to other nodes. They also have an ID that is used to distinguish between different entities (the idea is similar to ERC721 tokens in this respect). Edges on the other hand only store the address of the source node and the ID of the destination node they connect to. The nodes and edges form what is referred to as a “graph chain”, which is just a blockchain for storing information about various things in a decentralized fashion. The Graph uses its consensus mechanism to ensure that the information stored in the graph chains is accurate and consistent.
Developers of the decentralized protocol Graph (GRT) claim that their platform is the first initiative to bring together blockchain and graph technology. The founders of the project emphasize that The Graph platform offers a solution to the main problems with the utilization of blockchain networks.