Idea - Query The Graph with A Credit Card (no tx fees)

Story:

I started using The Graph for my projects. The subgraphs I’ve used didn’t cost me and worked great. Very happy.

Started looking at other subgraphs that required an api key. The key needed to be funded with GRT.

Went on a dex to swap $5 worth of ETH for GRT. Then moved my GRT from layer 1 to layer 2 (polygon). Then moved my L2 polygon to the graph contract to query.

Process took 30 minutes. Below are the transaction fees.

I’ve been thinking, can I just pay $5 with my credit card to get the same data? I don’t want to deal with these fees. Especially for rapid prototyping.

Is anyone getting rekt with transaction fees? Would love to hear your experiences.

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I suggest purchasing matic and swapping that for GRT. I believe there’s a pool on sushi to trade matic for GRT (minimize the L1 gas costs). Ideally we start having better bridges to L2. For example, if you could send GRT from your fiat on-ramp directly to your polygon wallet, this would be a fairly seemless process.

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To be clear, this is not an exchange. We’re not trading dollars for tokens.

Instead this is an API services. You pay for data.

I was hoping there will be different paths of convenience.

  • From Story: Credit Card → Exchange → L1 → L2 → Query Subgraph
  • @DataNexus suggestion: Credit Card → L2 → Query Subgraph
  • GraphFiat: Credit Card → Query Subgraph
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Under the hood you must pay in GRT on Polygon (at least right now while query fees are handled via the AllocationExchange contract. In the future you may be able to pay with GRT on another chain, but always GRT).

Someone could build a service that abstracts away the technicalities of that for developers (i.e. achieves what looks like Credit Card → Query subgraph, but this business would paying the protocol in GRT under the hood, and would be responsible for taking fiat acquired and swapping it for GRT to facilitate payments to the protocol).

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That’ll be the exact service we’re building :grinning:

Posting here to gauge interest.

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