With the Graph Mainnet Migration Path announcement made here and the reaction to the proposal of GIP0004 to replace GIP0002 I feel the need to instill some urgency, to ensure that everyone fully understands the gravity of the time-to-revenue Indexers face and the impact of waiting for GIP0004. I am writing this now because waiting for the next Council meeting is too late. With hindsight and knowledge of the Mainnet Migration Plan, this is the strength of opinion I would have delivered to the Council meeting.
Indexers have made valid points about the burden of their financial situation and how waiting on GIP0004 worsens the it for many. These issues skew aggressively against smaller indexers. Please take the time to read their thoughts in this thread and understand the weight they carry. My focus here is on exploring realistic timeframes and getting this sorely needed fix in place as soon as possible.
The migration announcement sets out plans to start migration tests in April during which Indexers will see no revenue despite the requirement to scale up operations both opex (labor, hosting) and capex (compute). The migration announcement sets out plans to move into production apps after that. With GIP0004, Indexers will continue see no realized revenue until at least June/July at best so there is an expectation that they continue to scale and provide services into live migrations with no revenue. This is not acceptable in any business environment.
When taking into consideration governance process, technical review of GIP0004, auditing being an unknown timeline but critical path to a GIP0004 upgrade, we are looking at late June/July before rewards start to hit Indexer wallets as an optimistic case. Thank you to @Pete-LunaNova and @dancube for setting this out so clearly. Given the current bull market and how it creates extreme difficulty in sourcing auditors, especially auditors that already have knowledge of the codebase, we could be waiting any amount of time for a GIP0004 audit - Indexer’s cannot tolerate such uncertainty anymore.
We need our Indexers to move into testing and migration with their minds focussed on delivering an excellent service, not struggling to stay afloat or crushed under tax obligations because by the time they can access any of their revenue, a whole year has passed since Mission Control started.
The migration announcement crystallizes my personal opinion - we need to resolve the Indexer rewards issue now with GIP0002. I implore everyone that in responding to this, we focus on how we come together to fix the shortfall promptly. Lets move into Mainnet Migration with confidence that all stakeholders are financially positioned to play their part. If we have to resolve some GIP0002 risks and we have assessed those risks appropriately, lets do so retroactively and as promptly as we can.
Thank you to everyone that has contributed and continues to engage in the discussion.