As newer chains continue to scale and generate massive volumes of data, it’s becoming clear that traditional subgraphs may eventually hit performance limitations. Substreams are built to handle this scale and speed.
But there’s a problem: right now, there’s little to no incentive for developers to create and maintain Substreams modules. This poses a risk if we don’t address the incentive structure soon, the ecosystem might lag behind as demand for high-throughput indexing grows.
Proposal:
Introduce a “Substreams Packages” section in the Graph Explorer, similar to the existing subgraph directory. But here’s the key difference:
- Usage-based royalties could be paid to Substreams developers.
- This could be capped (e.g. one-time, or recurring up to a max limit), but would provide real incentive to contribute performant, reusable modules.
- Devs could compose multiple modules into composable packages with metadata and examples making them more discoverable and easier to use.
Why this matters:
- Gives developers skin in the game.
- Accelerates Substreams adoption.
- Makes high-performance indexing more accessible and in one place (currently substreams.dev).
I know there are plenty of details to work out (royalty mechanics, fee routing), but the core idea is worth exploring IMO