Graph Office Hours #283 (November 10, 2026)

General
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Recording: https://youtu.be/G27HIxbsW30
Host: Brandon Kramer (BK) from The Graph Foundation

Here is a summary of this week’s Graph Office Hours. This summary is written from the call recording and the deck.

Rewards Eligibility Oracle: Step 4 Starts November 17

Indexers above 40M GRT total stake: work out your Step 4 number before November 17. Count the Subgraphs you serve qualifying queries on each day. If you are short, allocate to and sync more Subgraphs, and plan sync capacity with headroom.

REO is moving from Phase 1 to Phase 2. Total issuance does not change. REO changes who receives it.

  • Phase 1 (Steps 1 to 3) set a service baseline. The requirement rose from 1, to 5, then 10 qualifying Subgraphs per online day, the same bar for every Indexer.
  • Phase 2 (from Step 4) scales the requirement with stake. The 10 largest Indexers hold about 70% of total stake and received about 71% of indexing rewards (stake as of November 2; rewards paid August 2 to October 29). The Indexers that receive the most rewards should do the most work.

Step 4 is starting November 17: required qualifying Subgraphs = the greater of 10, or total stake ÷ 4M GRT, rounded up. Only Indexers above 40M GRT total stake see a change. Everyone else keeps the 10-Subgraph minimum.

Total stake Today Step 4 End goal
30M GRT 10 10 30
50M GRT 10 13 50
100M GRT 10 25 100
200M GRT 10 50 200

The count is Subgraphs you serve qualifying queries on, not Subgraphs you sync. A qualifying query returns HTTP 200, responds in under 5,000 ms, and is within 50,000 blocks of chainhead. As with earlier steps, a change takes about two weeks to reach full effect, because eligibility renewals last 14 days.

The REO roadmap. Step 4 on November 17 is the only fixed date. The later steps are projected and subject to change:

  • Step 5: about 1 qualifying Subgraph per 3M GRT, likely early to mid-December.
  • Holiday freeze: no changes from late December to early January. REO keeps running.
  • Steps 6 and 7: 1 per 2M GRT, then 1 per 1M GRT, from January to March 2027.

Each step gets at least 14 days’ notice and the data behind it. If the Foundation sees effects it did not expect, it will change the timeline, the criteria, or both.

Questions from the call:

  • Is there an end goal? Phase 2 ends at 1 qualifying Subgraph per 1M GRT of total stake, on top of the 10-Subgraph floor. Further steps after Step 7 are possible but not planned.
  • How many Indexers will this affect? 45 Indexers were eligible on the REO dashboard just before the call, above the 42 the Foundation had modeled, so at least three Indexers stepped up after Step 3. Phase 2 is expected to affect fewer Indexers but more stake. The Foundation’s model assumes Indexers keep a comfortable buffer above the minimum. On that basis, 11 of the top 20 Indexers would not yet meet the proposed Phase 2 requirements, and they hold as much as 55% of total stake. Many are close, but they need to step up to meet the bar comfortably each active day.
  • Why steps instead of one change? Growing from 10 to 100+ served Subgraphs is harder for a large Indexer than going from 0 to 10 is for a small one. The early steps come in closer succession. The final two steps, where the biggest changes happen, have longer gaps, so Indexers can plan.

Every Indexer’s status is public on the REO dashboard: https://reo.thegraph.com/

Adjacent ecosystems

Changes in other ecosystems that affect Subgraph, Substreams, Firehose, and Token API data. Dates come from project docs and news coverage and can slip.

Recent and scheduled

  • Polygon PoS Uburu hard fork (November 5): Bor v2.11.0 changes how state syncs run and get recorded. Nodes on v2.10.3 or older stopped following the chain at the fork block.
  • Base Denim (November 5): blocks now come every 200ms, five per second, and Flashblocks are off. block.number moves 10x faster, while block.timestamp still counts in whole seconds. The Foundation has already seen the extra block volume in its own infrastructure.
  • Elysium mainnet (November 9): Kinetiq’s Layer 2 for Hyperliquid, with HYPE for gas. Live on Substreams from block 0. See Chain updates below.
  • Polymarket Protocol V2 (November 9, target): the cutover moved from November 2. It is not yet confirmed that the switch happened. Existing V1 positions do not convert automatically.
  • Stellar Protocol 30 “Bell” (validator vote November 23): a new ledger header with millisecond timestamps. Older SDKs may fail to decode the new ledgers, so update XDR definitions and SDKs.
  • BNB Chain Jenner (December 8, 02:30 UTC): CAS20 compliant-token precompiles, 5% of block gas reserved for payments, and millisecond time through a precompile while block.timestamp stays in seconds. Node operators must upgrade first.

Watch list

  • Polygon recovery fork (proposed): would move about 70.5M POL from five blocked addresses into recovery wallets. Balances would change at a fixed block without a transaction, which breaks balance indexers that rebuild state from transfers. Not yet approved.
  • Ethereum Glamsterdam (slipped): the Hoodi testnet fork was cancelled to study the EIP-8037 storage pricing change. No new date is set, and a Q4 mainnet now looks unlikely.
  • Lido Lend (Q4, no date): a new lending product on a modified Morpho Blue. It needs new Subgraphs at launch.

Node and software releases

Chain updates: Elysium on Substreams

Elysium, Kinetiq’s Layer 2 for Hyperliquid, went live on November 9, and Substreams and Firehose support it from block 0. Thanks to StreamingFast for the integration.

From the Q&A: Subgraph support for Elysium is not available today. BK will follow up with the Elysium team about their plans.

Studio to Network: Base is next

Indexers: start planning for Base now. Base is a large chain, and Denim raised its block rate. Plan for infrastructure changes, and tell the Foundation (BK or Orjan) before you scale up, so you can align on how many Subgraphs and how much traffic to expect.

Phase 1 is done. More than 860 BSC and Polygon Subgraphs moved from Subgraph Studio to The Graph Network, and Indexers on the Network now serve them. No major issues came up, and that infrastructure has been removed from the upgrade Indexer.

Phase 2: Base

  • November 17: the announcement goes out to developers, and the curation bot that worked well in Phase 1 starts signaling on Base Subgraphs.
  • December 1: deadline for developers to publish Base Subgraphs that are only in Studio.
  • December 1 to 15: the Foundation keeps adding signal for late publishers, and shuts down Base support on the upgrade Indexer. By December 15, all Base Subgraphs should be on the Network.

The coverage list goes to #indexer-announcements after launch. Post sync issues and questions in #indexers.

After Base: future network migrations will likely come after Indexing Payments (DIPs) is introduced. That timeline is projected and subject to change.

From the chat: community feedback flagged that Explorer’s APR display needs improvement. Pedro will take it to the product team.

Phase 1 recap: Bringing Subgraph Studio Traffic to The Graph Network | Blog | The Graph

Graph Node updates

Graph Node is in stabilization mode: the team is working through the open PR queue so that the software stays stable while fixes keep landing.

  • Older PRs closed to clear the queue.
  • Low-quality PRs closed, including a number of AI-generated PRs. New PRs were opened for some of the Issues they targeted.
  • Small fixes addressed this week. Legitimate fixes that need small changes get review comments first.

Follow Issue and PR activity in #github on Discord.

Substreams updates

No new core release this week. Substreams v1.26.0 (October 30) is still the latest. No action is needed from most Indexers.

  • SQL sink work merged: background flush for faster catch-up, delta-merge and live-write fixes, a --password-envvar flag, and a ClickHouse fix. Not yet in a tagged release.
  • substreams-solana v0.17.0: in progress, adding transaction indexes and BlockRevenueSharing.
  • substreams-ethereum v0.12.1: abigen now compiles when an ABI function or event is named Result, Option, Vec, or String.
  • firehose-core: release candidates add a configurable tier1 status page.
  • For developers: substreams-skills v1.7.1 adds AI-agent references for performance guidelines and package updates.

Thanks to StreamingFast for the steady work.

Ongoing Foundation initiatives

These are not live yet. The expected order is Liquid Staking, then Indexing Payments, then Studio pricing.

  • Liquid Staking: still in Phase 1, a small soft launch. The team that operated the vault in its early phase is winding down. This did not affect the technology, but the vault needs a new operator. The Foundation is making progress and expects an update in the coming weeks. Informational only, not financial advice.
  • Indexing Payments (DIPs): the broader rollout is likely in early January 2027. Testing may start earlier, which could let Subgraph Studio move one or two chains to the Network using DIPs sooner. These dates are targets, not commitments.
  • Foundation Studio pricing: the model is largely settled inside the Foundation. It will reach users shortly after Indexing Payments. No pricing changes yet.

Multi-Gateway Subgraph Service

A recap of last week’s deep dive, plus next steps. This is still an internal Foundation proposal before it goes to The Graph Council.

What a gateway does. Indexers on The Graph Network store and serve the data. Gateways sit on top: they route queries to Indexers, return data to consumers, handle payments to Indexers, and manage API keys.

The Foundation’s gateway approach:

  1. Run the canonical gateway long-term, under Subgraph Studio and thegraph.com.
  2. Enable external gateways, with three tiers of support.
  3. Limited influence by default over other gateways’ pricing and products. The Foundation also runs the Subgraph Service and keeps working on network efficiency, such as REO.
  4. Not prioritizing outreach. The Foundation is working with two design partners and is not trying to bring in many gateways at once.

Three tiers of external gateway support:

  • Enablement: open-source software and setup help, open to any team.
  • Endorsement: gateways that meet a quality of service threshold and brand rules get acknowledgement from the Foundation and the ecosystem, and a listing in the Docs.
  • Expansion: a negotiated contract for product listings, marketing, and BD reach.

Next steps:

  1. Working with two design partners
  2. Finalizing the QoS framework for Subgraph Gateways: think of it as REO for gateways, so that endorsed gateways meet a quality bar and poor service does not reflect on The Graph
  3. Finalizing brand and referral guidelines
  4. Updating the Docs to be provider neutral, listing every endorsed gateway
  5. Developing a Multi-Service Gateway Framework for future data services

Why it matters: today The Graph has one main gateway with broad reach. More endorsed gateways mean more ways in, and gateways with existing users bring that traffic to the Network, which benefits Indexers and the wider ecosystem. The Foundation hopes to share an update in the next few weeks.

Open floor

No further questions came up at the end of the call. Thanks to everyone who joined and asked questions in the chat.

Questions or feedback? Reply below, or join the next call on Tuesday at 17:00 UTC on the Discord stage.