Academy by CoinMarketCap takes a deep dive into The Graph (GRT), a Web 3.0 platform that makes data accessibility easy, fast, and reliable for the entire crypto economy.
The Graph (GRT) is a project that allows users to construct and publish subgraphs that make data open to anyone. Originating from Ethereum, The Graph is a decentralized system for indexing and querying data from blockchains. It enables users to query data that would be hard to obtain normally.
Join us in showcasing the cryptocurrency revolution, one newsletter at a time. Subscribe now to get daily news and market updates right to your inbox, along with our millions of other subscribers (that’s right, millions love us!) — what are you waiting for?
How Does The Graph (GRT) Work?
Based on subgraph manifest definitions, the Graph understands what to index and how to index Ethereum data. The subgraph description specifies the smart contracts that a subgraph is interested in, the events that should be monitored in those contracts, and how event data should be mapped to data that The Graph will store in its database.
What Does The Graph (GRT) Network Consists of?
The Graph Network is made up of Indexers, Curators, and Delegators who feed data to Web3 applications and provide services to the network. Consumers interact with the apps and consume the info.
Participants stake and use GRT tokens to guarantee the economic security of The Graph Network and the integrity of data queried. GRT is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain that is used to manage network resources. Active Indexers, Curators, and Delegators can give services and earn money from the network based on their services and stakes.
Developers
The developers can use the subgraph studio used specifically for subgraphs that can index the Ethereum mainnet. The developers can also use hosted services through which they index networks that are present outside the Ethereum mainnet.
Indexers
Indexers are node operators in The Graph Network who provide indexing and query processing services in exchange for GRT. Query fees and indexing rewards are paid to them in exchange for their efforts. They also profit from the Cobbs-Douglas Rebate Function, which distributes a Rebate Pool proportionally to the effort of all network contributors.
GRT that is staked in the protocol is subjected to a thawing period and can be shortened if Indexers are malicious and provide inaccurate data to apps, or if they index wrongly.
Curators stake GRT to indicate which subgraphs are high-quality and should be prioritized, and indexers determine which subgraphs to index based on the curation signal for that subgraph. Learn more about indexing rewards here.
Curators
Curators are crucial to The Graph decentralized economy because they review and signal the subgraphs that should be indexed by The Graph Network using their expertise in the web3 ecosystem. Curators can use the Explorer to look at network data and make signaling judgments.
The Graph Network pays curators who flag high-quality subgraphs with a share of the query fees generated by those subgraphs. Early signaling is financially rewarded for curators. Indexers, who can then analyze or index the data from these signaled subgraphs, rely on these curator cues. Curators can choose to signal on a specific version of the subgraph or to use auto-migrate when signaling.
Delegators
Delegators cannot be removed for inappropriate behavior, but there is a deposit tax on them to discourage improper decision-making that could jeopardize the network's authenticity.
On their delegated stake, delegators enjoy the protocol's earnings with all indexers. When selecting Indexers, a Delegator must apply their best judgment based on a variety of considerations like the delegation fee, the delegation unbonding period, choosing a trustworthy indexer, and so on.
Unique Features of The Graph (GRT)
Unique Utility
Data is kept on the Ethereum blockchain by projects with complicated smart contracts, such as Uniswap, and NFTs efforts, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, making it extremely difficult to read anything other than basic data directly from the blockchain. The utility of The Graph protocol is unique and best understood through this example.
Fundamental read operations on the contract, such as getting the owner of a specific Ape, obtaining the content URI of an Ape based on their ID, or getting the total supply, are possible in the case of Bored Ape Yacht Club because these read operations are programmed straight into the smart contract, but more sophisticated real-world queries and operations, such as aggregation, search, relationships, and non-trivial filtering, are not possible. For instance, if we tried to search for apes possessed by a specific address and limited by one of their attributes, we wouldn't be able to do so by engaging directly with the contract.
To obtain this information, you would have to analyze each and every transfer occurrence ever sent, read the metadata from IPFS using the Token ID and IPFS hash, and then aggregate it. A decentralized application running in a browser might take hours or even days to answer these sorts of very easy inquiries.
You could also build your own server, process transactions there, store them in a database, and then query the data using an API endpoint built on top of it all. This solution, on the other hand, is resource-heavy, requires maintenance, creates a single point of failure, and compromises key security qualities essential for decentralization.
Finality, chain reorganizations, and uncalled blocks all hinder this procedure, making it not only time demanding but also conceptually difficult to extract the right query answers from blockchain data.
The Graph overcomes this problem by providing a decentralized system that indexes blockchain data and allows for faster and effective searching. A normal GraphQL API may then be used to query these APIs. There is now a hosted service and a decentralized protocol that perform the same functions. Both are handled by Graph Node, an open-source implementation.
The Graph (GRT) Tokenomics
The total token supply of GRT tokens is 10,000,000,000 and the current circulating supply is set at 4.72B GRT.
The Graph (GRT) Price
The Graph (GRT) is now trading around $0.5772, as of Jan. 12, 2022. Its 24-hour trading volume on exchanges is around $95,110,709.
The Graph (GRT) Price Prediction and Future Outlook
The Graph (GRT) is based on the Web 3.0 mechanism where all network roles, including the developer, indexer, curator, and delegator, get their fair share from the GRT network. Since the world is currently in the transition period from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, GRT can bank on its unique features and polish them even further to lead the race of the future on which the web will operate. This will have an automatic effect on the price of the GRT token, which can break the $5 mark once the Web 3.0 tokens start to pump.
It must be noted that Web 3.0 is decentralized and enables connectivity like never before. $27 billion has already been invested in Web 3.0 by institutional investors who are banking on it to be the future of the internet. Ex-CEO of Twitter and many others are the early adopters of Web 3.0, and this trend is expected to skyrocket in 2022.
As the world takes a huge step towards adopting Web 3.0, GRT holders can expect the price of the token to go up significantly. Let's now discuss the GRT token's price history and its potential future.
Since its launch back in December 2020, the GRT token has gained over 450% now with its current price holding in the $0.5 range. The token went to an all-time high of $2.84 in February 2021; however, the infamous crypto crash of May 2021 brought it under $1. Since then, the GRT token has gone slightly above $1, however, its average holding price has been $0.5. This, however, is good news for the GRT holders, as many crypto experts believe that the Web 3.0 storm would take GRT back to its all-time highs in 2022. Although the GRT token belongs to the Web 3.0 family and is backed by many crypto experts out there, the high volatility of the crypto market makes it very difficult to predict the timing of the potential price spike.
This article contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of CoinMarketCap, and CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. CoinMarketCap is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by CoinMarketCap of the site or any association with its operators. This article is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. It is important to do your own research and analysis before making any material decisions related to any of the products or services described. This article is not intended as, and shall not be construed as, financial advice. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s [company’s] own and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinMarketCap. CoinMarketCap is not responsible for the success or authenticity of any project, we aim to act as a neutral informational resource for end-users.
