The Graph Council - Meeting #4 Notes

Council members value transparency and have agreed to follow Chatham House Rules for sharing meeting notes. On Monday, April 26, 2021, The Graph Council held its 4th meeting.


Roster

Council Members (“Members”)

Michael Anderson
Jim Cousins
Yondon Fu
Gary Morris
Justin Moses
Spencer Noon
Santiago Palladino
Brandon Ramirez
Yaniv Tal
Kayvon Tehranian

The Graph Foundation
Eva Beylin, Director, The Graph Foundation (the “Foundation”)

Notetaker and Observers
Notetaker: Martin Tellechea, The Graph Foundation
Observer: Jeremy Sklaroff, Edge & Node Ventures, Inc. (“Edge & Node”)

Council Business
The meeting commenced at noon PDT.

Meeting

New Subgraphs on Mainnet

A Council member discussed that a new subgraph (related to Livepeer, but which used the PoolTogether logo and description) was deployed and indexed on Mainnet by a user that was unknown to the Council, the Foundation or Edge & Node. The member believed that this user may have also sybiled the testnet. There hasn’t been any drawback, the protocol is working as intended. Indexers are picking this new subgraph on the network and allocating towards it.

The members discussed that the community is moving forward with the Mainnet migration. A member mentioned that the Arbitration charter was published on the GIP repo on the Radicle repo and shared on the Forum. The member shared details about the Arbitration charter, explaining how the Arbitrators would work and how disputes are tackled based on how the implementation works (limited by how solidity works) and what features could be covered / incorporated at a later stage.

A member shared that this will be covered in more detail in the next Town Hall (#3), scheduled for next week, Tuesday May 4th 2021.

GIPs & Protocol Town Hall

A member shared that several GIPs are under development by the community:

  • Separate slashing percentages
  • Arbitration charter
  • Wasm gas costing

A member discussed that the Subgraph Oracle charter is almost ready, but the GIP probably won’t be ready for the next Town Hall. It aims to be able to remove a random subgraph to disable subgraph rewards for that specific subgraph, for example if the subgraph is in bad state (random data) or if the subgraph is not available in IPFS (which means no other Indexer could index it).

A member asked if publishing a subgraph on mainnet was limited before this happened. A member clarified that it was always possible as the network is permissionless and was never done because it was not encouraged while the network bootstrapped indexing. Clarifying that this can’t be classified as an attack, and given how the curation tax works it becomes less profitable.

Protocol Upgrades

A member updated the Council that GIP-0003 has already been audited and received support via a Snapshot vote. The members discussed that this meant that it could be formally approved by vote of the Council.

A member mentioned the Withdrawal Helper topic, sharing that it involves an upgrade to support Vector/Scalar, which is the new state channels framework on Mainnet. A member shared that it is being audited by ChainSafe right now and that the community would need it deployed to Mainnet (upgrade as a parameter change) in the next weeks.

Council Meetings

A member discussed the scheduling of the recurring meeting regarding the biweekly meeting (Tuesday 11am PT). The members agreed on the following meetings to be scheduled on that time.

Grants Program

A member brought up the topic of grants to Indexers and discussed objectives of such a program, possible candidates, possible amounts and other potential details.

A member asked about what the potential application process for this program could involve. A member discussed whether to keep the program limited in scope, only available to select Indexers, or to open applications to the general community of Indexers. Members discussed that a program wide in scope could end up providing grants to well-funded Indexers that could afford to operate without receiving a grant.

The members discussed how grants to Indexers could impact the protocol economics and security.

The members discussed whether there were DeFi protocols that would enable Indexers to borrow GRT to launch an Indexer operation or expand existing operations, which could be an alternative to the potential Indexer grant program. The members discussed whether the Foundation should partner with such DeFi protocols to achieve that goal.

A representative of the Foundation noted that any such Indexer initiatives or agreements, including under the potential grant program, will be brought to the Council for its approval.

The Council agreed to review available options for providing Indexer grants, possible risks of such a grant program and whether to use an existing protocol for facilitating the grants. The Council agreed to continue this discussion at its next meeting.

Next Meeting

The Council agreed to meet again in two weeks.

The meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm PDT.

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