Edge & Node’s February/March Update

Research & Development Core Team Updates
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:woman_astronaut: Executive Summary

In the past few weeks, we have shipped improvements to enhance today’s network experience, while simultaneously painting a vivid picture of potential future protocol dynamics described in the Graph Horizon proposal. Consistent with adapting to the web3 data needs of today, while also preparing ourselves for what’s ahead, we continue to make progress towards the Sunrise of Decentralized Data to upgrade all hosted service traffic to The Graph Network. Via The Graph Network we are enabling web3 use cases with unbreakable data. See below our (Edge & Node’s) recent milestones along with what we’re working on next:

Notable January & February Accomplishments:

  • Posted an explanation of Edge & Node’s Graph Horizon proposal, a vision for the evolution of The Graph’s underlying protocol
  • Released an anticipated Graph Node update, v0.34.0, which includes new functions for enhancing query performance and a new way to use Substreams when building subgraphs
  • Reached a major L2 milestone with 83% of staked GRT on The Graph Network on Arbitrum

The above list is non-exhaustive — for more details on the above and other accomplishments, below are a few categories of accomplishments along with upcoming goals.

1. Improving The Graph Network experience

  • The Research & Protocol team posted about the Graph Horizon proposal (Graph Horizon Explained: A Proposal for the Evolution of the Protocol) and presented it to The Graph Council.
  • The Graph Node team reached a milestone by releasing v0.34.0, with many highly-anticipated updates including:
    • The inclusion of IndexerHints in a subgraph’s manifest to help automate pruning
    • The ability to use Substreams as triggers for subgraph mappings when developing Substreams-powered subgraphs
    • Initial work to enable future Starknet compatibility, following their Chain Integration Process proposal
    • An update to GraphiQL V2
    • Bug fixes
  • Subgraph searching and filtering in Graph Explorer got a level-up:
    • You can now search subgraphs by both name and subgraph owner, and apply more filters and sorting than before. Search results and applied filter/sorts are now shareable via link!
    • Ex: Find all Messari subgraphs indexing Optimism, ordered by creation date, and share the URL so that your collaborators can view the exact same results
  • Bringing to fruition months of hard work, Edge & Node initiated transactions for on-chain actions related to the approval of several GIPs discussed in past updates:

2. Increasing Adoption of The Graph Network on L2

  • We have continued to facilitate The Graph Network’s participants in transferring to Layer 2 via Arbitrum:
    • Over 88% of all of The Graph Network’s query volume is now taking place on Arbitrum
    • Since 95% of indexing rewards are now distributed on Arbitrum, with 111 Indexers having transferred a majority of their stake there, 2.5B+ GRT is now staked on Arbitrum.
      • This means over 83% of all staked GRT is now on Arbitrum.

3. Empowering the wider ecosystem of The Graph

  • We continue to support even more chains:
    • Initial support for Linea Testnet and Mainnet in Subgraph Studio
    • Blast VM testnet integration is live on Subgraph Studio
  • We continue to engage the ecosystem with a mix of educational, hacker-oriented as well as community content:
  • The House of Web3 continues to be the quintessential place for web3 co-creation
    • We planned and hosted SF Crypto event with 300+ attendees
    • We organized & hosted a pitch deck workshop
    • Rolled out Co-Creation Contributor NFT business model on Feb 1st
      • This has so far resulted in 43 NFT holders
    • Download our app (iOS and Android available) now and stay abreast of upcoming events and news!
  • The Developer Relations organized and lead 5 Graph Builders Office Hours sessions, hosting Joshua from Phala Network, the Brian AI team, Adhinav from Dapplooker, Kindnesss.eth from Token Name Service, and Thomas from BuildersDAO on Substream Composability.

What’s Next

We continue pushing forward the Sunrise of Decentralized Data:

  • Progress is accelerating for the remaining two releases detailed under the Sunray phase: a seamless upgrade interface and a free query plan — the completion of which will mark the start of the Sunbeam phase
  • We continue to prepare dapps across the hosted service for Sunrise by processing grants, walking through the steps of upgrading, and overall reducing friction for network adoption
  • The House of Web3 aims to host a The Graph Hackathon Campaign
  • Subgraph-building guides unique to each chain supported by The Graph are coming, which will help address the unique needs of developers across different chain ecosystems
  • EthDenver will be a focal point for promoting network upgrades, Developer Relations, and the Sunrise of Decentralized Data!
    • Get in touch with Edge & Node or members of The Graph ecosystem at ETH Denver!

We continue collaborating on DevEx, UX and feature improvements to The Graph Network:

  • Perform end-to-end tests of the TAP payment system on the Graph Network’s Sepolia Testnet that includes:
    • Testing that an Indexer aggregates receipts properly
    • Testing that an Indexer collects payments for RAVs (receipt aggregate vouchers)
  • New features to prepare the Studio for the Sunrise:
    1. UI redesign on billing to have a more familiar onboarding and management experience
    2. A free tier which grants users a number of queries per month.
    3. Ability to pay by card (with conversion to GRT on the backend)
  • Aligning community consensus around the brownfield (gradual protocol upgrades) vs greenfield (new protocol development) approach for Graph Horizon and sharing the corresponding first draft architecture
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