Edge & Node’s July / August Update

Tegan · August 14, 2023, 5:56pm

Executive summary

At Edge & Node, we’re on a mission to empower web3 and make blockchain data readily available to all. We’re relentlessly executing on this mission, and maintaining value alignment as The Graph Network serves more of the world’s open data every day.

North Star: Upgrade all of the hosted service traffic to the decentralized network as smoothly and quickly as possible

Notable July Accomplishments:

We executed on Billing 2.0 and shipped the Billing Subscriptions MVP in beta. Early adopters can try out a flat rate plan for data consumption on The Graph Network. Interested in learning more about beta for The Graph Subscriptions? Check out the beta documentation. As always, we welcome feedback on the billing experience, so feel free to send us an email!
L2 Transfer Tools are undergoing testnet validation so that participants will be able to easily and safely move stake, signal, delegation, and subgraphs from The Graph Network on Ethereum to The Graph Network on Arbitrum.
Improving support across The Graph has been a big focus. With this, we rolled out a robust feedback and support system for managing infrastructure incidents.
Sunrise plan - we reworked internal plans and have a plan to upgrade the hosted service to The Graph Network, we will share more on this soon. If you want to review the draft of the plans with us and provide feedback, please get in touch.
Substreams as a data source - The Graph Council approved Substreams datasource in the feature matrix for indexing rewards.

See below a detailed list of updates. They align with our tracks to support top-level strategic initiatives:

1. The Sunrise of Decentralized Data

In July, 31 subgraphs were published to The Graph’s decentralized network. 18 of these subgraphs upgraded from the hosted service to the decentralized network. Two of these subgraphs were highly used subgraphs with 1M+ daily queries each.
- Also secured network upgrade commitments from 20+ dapps, with some using multiple subgraphs in production across many chains, and sent network grants for 33 subgraphs
- Everyday entrepreneurs and data consumers choose decentralized data over hosted data - moving further and further away from counterparty risk when it comes to infrastructure.
Unblocked the network upgrade process for 5 of the hosted service’s most highly-used community subgraphs. This was achieved by the Edge & Node team whitegloving subgraph publication & curation, enabling the five communities to begin querying network subgraphs without waiting on respective dapp devs to upgrade to the network themselves.
We met with and got alignment from the Arbitrum engineering leadership team to start on the Firehose integration and passed it over to StreamingFast who is leading the charge from a technical standpoint. This integration will unlock Substreams for builders on Arbitrum.
At EthCC in Paris, we met with 146 teams, of which, 83 were dapps:
- 42 dapps that are already using The Graph, pushing forward progress to upgrading to the network for scores of subgraphs
- 41 dapps that are potential net new data consumers, some of which have already committed to using The Graph and plan to launch directly on the decentralized network
- We met with L1 and L2 blockchains to discuss Firehose integrations to unlock Substreams for their ecosystems: Optimism, Avalanche (and subnet ecosystem), Polygon, Fantom, Cosmos, and many more.

2. Focusing on improving the experience for network participants

We shipped the Billing Subscriptions MVP, which allows early adopter devs and data consumers to pay a fixed monthly rate for queries - stay tuned for permissionless access to subscriptions
L2 transfer tools UI are undergoing testnet validation with volunteers before launch. The transfer tools contracts are ready and The Graph Council is ready to proceed with the deployment when testing finishes. Tutorial materials are already prepared to educate users on how to use the transfer tools.
Shipped required changes for GIP-0051: Exponential Query Fee Rebates across smart contracts, Gateway and indexer components. This change will follow the L2 Transfer Tools release (pending governance approval), and will improve legibility & overall query fee collection for indexers.
Collaborated with StreamingFast to bring full support for Substreams-powered Subgraphs on Ethereum to The Graph Network, as the start of the upcoming World of Data Services.
Rolled out an incident management policy
- Improves support coordination with the community of Subgraph Guardians
- Specifies internal roles for resolution of incidents and communications about the resolution

3. Empowering the wider ecosystem of The Graph

Integrated and supported Base’s mainnet, developers are building subgraphs on Base
Published Substreams-powered subgraphs blog along with documentation on how to get started building. We also collaborated with StreamingFast to ship a benchmarking analysis on the indexing speed of Substreams-powered subgraphs.
Shared the Account Abstraction explainer blog detailing the subject and how it relates to the capabilities of The Graph
Announced the winners of The Graph Foundation’s bounties at ETHGlobal Paris - Congratulations to all the winning teams
Drafted and issued first warning of hosted service downtime due to maintenance occurring August 14th (The Graph Network does not have scheduled downtime)
Working with The Guild to bring more ecosystem documentation to Get Started | Docs | The Graph
Published Permissionless Payers GIP to propose removing the limitation of specific governance-approved entities to pay query fees to Indexers in the network
Shipped two editions of web3 Tea and updated cadence to 2x monthly

Other accomplishments this month

EVENTS

Attended EthCC/ETHGlobal Paris
- We hosted a Zero to Dapp Workshop with 200 attendees with speakers from Scaffold-ETH, Chainlink, Safe, Connext, Push Protocol, Open Zeppelin, and Edge & Node.
- Members of The Graph ecosystem gave 11 keynotes, panels & workshops across the events
- The Graph’s booths at these events collectively saw 583 POAPs minted and 1,125 exclusive T-shirts given away
- 146 in-person meetings were held with those full time working on The Graph
ETHGlobal Paris
- 35 projects - 11% of overall submissions - used The Graph
- 6 Recorded video interviews with builders using The Graph

HOUSE OF WEB3

Ended July with high momentum and averaged 70+ daily co-creators at the House of Web3
Completed an art replacement project to refresh art on display throughout the space
Launched third art-focused event to celebrate collaboration with the community for their contribution to the art replacement project
Collaborated with co-sponsors of Thursday’s happy hours

DEVELOPER RELATIONS

Created two Video Tutorials on L2 Transfer Tooling, with 3 more to be finished soon
Hosted 5 workshops, panels, and talks at in-person events
- Kevin Jones spoke at ETH Seattle on Quickstart to Subgraph Development & Querying (no recording available)
- Kevin Jones spoke at Zero to Dapp on Build a Full Stack dapp Using Scaffold-ETH and The Graph (recording coming soon)
- Simon gave a presentation about “subgraphs as read-oriented roll-ups” at Blockchain Oracle Summit
- Marcus presented Workshop on File Data Sources presented at the House of Web3
- Marcus gave a Subgraph Developer Workshop at ETHGlobal Paris
- Simon moderated a panel about Account Abstraction during a side-event in Paris
The Graph BuildersDAO launched to drive the development of subgraphs and subgraph-related grants in The Graph ecosystem
- The DAO shipped its first newsletter
- A weekly office hours series was started
Graph Labs started at HoW3 - come get your questions answered in person if you’re in San Francisco

What’s Next

We continue working towards the Sunrise of Decentralized Data:

Continue working with 100+ dapps that have committed to upgrade to help them leverage the network. We aim to help upgrade at least 17 subgraphs to the decentralized network, of which we expect at least two more to have over 1M+ daily volume. Helping developers move away from counterparty risk when it comes to their infrastructure in web3.
Finalize the roadmaps for other L1 and L2 blockchains to integrate with The Graph
Open up billing subscriptions for all and provide a plan that includes bundled curation and queries
Continue scaling The Graph Network on Arbitrum:
- Final launch of all L2 Transfer Tools
- Start getting subgraphs across and participating on Arbitrum using L2 Transfer tools
- Start helping Indexers, Delegators, & Curators transfer to Arbitrum with L2 Transfer tools
Ongoing support and development for The Graph’s core indexing and querying technology
- Graph Node v0.32.0 release planned for mid-August
Many protocol improvements are in the works by core devs like Edge & Node. Please note that all improvements undergo governance processes via GIPs and votes by The Graph Council. We would love to hear your thoughts on the following:
- Pending Council vote, Exponential Rebates deployment
- GIP-0041 for improving dispute composability is under audit
- Published GIP-0044 Scalar/TAP GIP (in coordination with Semiotic)
- Currently being drafted:
  - GIPs for Horizon MVP and Direct Indexer Payments with Flat Rewards

We have set additional goals in the following categories: