The Graph’s Community Talk #28 was held on Tuesday, October 17th @8am pst.
The Graph’s Community Talk covers a wide range of subjects and provides attendees with a comprehensive recap of the latest happenings within The Graph community. The meetings are held in The Graph Stage channel of the Discord Server.
Tip: Go to the events channel at the top of the Discord server and set yourself a reminder for The Graph’s Community Talk.
Detailed notes regarding each topic with timestamps can be found below.
The Graph’s Community Talk is geared towards a broad audience regardless of background. Active participation and engagement from the community is encouraged!
You can find this and all other community events on the ecosystem calendar. Subscribe to the calendar to stay up to date on future events!
Summary
Community Updates (00:00)
- Devconnect Side Events
- Sponsorship and Prizes at EthGlobal
- Upcoming Latin American Events
- Technical Advisory Board (TAB)
- Edge & Node Upgrade Indexer
- Third Birthday Celebration
- Core Developers’ Monthly Updates
- GRTiQ Podcasts (Episodes 134 to 137)
EthNewYork Hackathon Demos (04:20)
- Winners and Their Projects
- TeachAI
- Leverage Labs
- How The Projects Use The Graph
- Hackathon Advice
Eth Rome (13:34)
- Event Highlights
- Winners and Their Projects
- Sharknado
- Zola
- Hackathon Advice
The Graph India (35:22)
- Founding and Initiatives
- Graph Guru Workshops
- Plans for ETHIndia in December 2023
Community Updates (00:00)
The Graph will be attending several side events for Devconnect, including DataPalooza hosted by The Graph Foundation. DataPalooza aims to explore infrastructure and data needs across the Ethereum network and the broader web3 ecosystem, covering a range of topics from dapps, analytics, tooling, LLMs and more. Also, check out ETHKampus, a hacker house that will house 30 hackers at Faik Paha Hotels during Devconnect.
The Graph is sponsoring EthGlobal and will offer prizes, so hackers are encouraged to use The Graph while hacking! The Graph will also participate in some Latin American events in the coming months, there will be a side event at ETH Mexico, and an event in Peru, featuring workshops led by The Graph Advocates.
The Graph Council is establishing a Technical Advisory Board (“TAB”) to accelerate R&D efforts and improve the technical aspects of the protocol. The board is open for nominations! Nominate yourselves or others here!
If you missed it, Edge & Node is spinning up an upgrade Indexer announced by Tegan Kline on the forum and X/Twitter. It will act as a fallback mechanism to ensure that all subgraphs that upgrade can be served, offering several benefits to dapp developers, and ensuring hosted service users can upgrade to The Graph Network seamlessly.
The Graph will celebrate its third birthday in December, with events confirmed in three cities. The details will be shared at the next community talk!
Core devs monthly updates have been posted; visit the forum to check them out!
GRTiQ New Episodes
This podcast featured Ben Jones, Director at the Optimism Foundation, discussing his journey into web3, the origins of Optimism, Layer 2 solutions, and the role of The Graph in the ecosystem.
GRTiQ Podcast: 135 Pedro Diogo
This podcast featured Pedro Diogo, Technical Program Manager at The Graph Foundation, discussing his background, Portugal’s crypto-friendly status, and his work at The Graph, including the MIPs program and the new Chain Integration Process.
GRTiQ Podcast: 136 Thierry Bleau
This podcast featured Thierry Bleau, Co-founder and COO at Playgrounds, talking about the recently released Playgrounds API and his journey into the web3 space.
GRTiQ Podcast: 137 Saihajpreet Singh
This podcast featured Saihajpreet Singh, a Software Engineer at The Guild, discussing his educational journey, contributions to the GraphQL community, and insights into The Graph and web3 technologies.
EthNewYork Hackathon Demos (04:20)
Community Talk #28 featured demos from teams who won prizes for their participation in the hackathon at ETHNewYork. TeachAI won Best New Subgraph/Substreams and Leverage Labs won Best use of Subgraph or Substreams.
TeachAI
TeachAI is a chat app where users interact with an AI model. Users pay to ask questions, rate the AI’s answers, and get a rebate for their feedback. All activities are transparently recorded using blockchain technologies. The team presented at the community talk and shared their project design, purpose and how it utilizes The Graph.
How The Project Uses The Graph
Subgraphs in TeachAI serve as the data backbone, collecting all user interactions and model responses. They track everything from the initial query to the user’s rating of the AI’s answer. This enables a fully transparent evolution of the AI model, helps identify strengths and weaknesses in the system, and facilitates ongoing improvements. Subgraphs make it easier to:
- Enables a seamless front-end experience for displaying on-chain data.
- Enables verifiable indexing of data, democratizing access to valuable feedback that can be used to improve models.
- Enables a system through which you can track LLM evolution, attributing changes to the model to not just certain data, but subsets of users.
Hackathon Advice:
To excel at using subgraphs in hackathons, focus on writing quality code and maintaining clear documentation. Make your schema well-defined, adding comments to enhance its usability. Aim for modularity to allow easier iterations in the future. Also, don’t hesitate to explore new features, like IPFS subgraphs, to take full advantage of the platform’s capabilities. The key is to create a well-documented, versatile, and high-quality subgraph that others can easily understand and build upon.
Leverage Labs (27:26)
Leverage Labs is a React-based web application designed to tackle the problem of liquidations in the NFT lending market, particularly on Blur.io. The tool initially focused on managing loans for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs (as the largest current lending market) and provides alerts and insights to users about their loan statuses through Wallet Connect Web3Inbox. Additionally, it serves valuable NFT lending data collected using The Graph protocol. The app also introduces a feature called “Noundvisor,” inspired by Windows Clippy, to offer alerts and advice.
Role of The Graph:
The Graph is integral for both querying the latest loan status to send out notifications and for generating insights presented in the web app. It simplified complex Event-Trigger-Load (ETL) processes and indexing, allowing Leverage Labs to map on-chain events into meaningful and actionable data.
Hackathon Advice:
The most beneficial approach at a hackathon, especially when using sponsor technology like The Graph, is direct engagement with the team behind the technology. This provides invaluable insights beyond what documentation offers.
Eth Rome (13:34)
Andrea highlighted the success of the ETHRome event, which saw participation from over 130 hackers who collectively created more than 40 projects. The event offered $2,500 in bounties through Graph AdvocatesDAO. Marcus hosted a workshop focused on how to utilize The Graph, which was used in 25% of the projects. Attendees also had the opportunity to earn an ETHRome POAP. Sharknado took the opportunity to present their project, showcasing how they utilized The Graph.
Winners for Best New Subgraph/Substreams:
Winners for Best Use of Existing Subgraph/Substreams:
Sharknado
Sharknado is a blockchain-based survey platform that focuses on privacy and selective participation. Users can participate in surveys only if they hold a specific NFT, like the team’s “shark token.” Participation is private, meaning that no one can see the participating address. The platform also features pseudo-private payouts, allowing winners to provide an alternative address for rewards. The unique aspect of the surveys is that they function as a lottery. After a certain number of participants, one winner is randomly selected to receive all the rewards. The project utilizes subgraphs to collect and display information like who the lottery winner is. They showed how easy it is to utilize Subgraph Studio on the call!
Zola
Zola is a blockchain scaling solution that aims to improve the user experience in buying and selling both physical and digital products. Developed at the ETHRome hackathon, Zola introduced an on-chain escrow feature with privacy enhancements via Railgun. What sets Zola apart is its focus on protecting user identity while maintaining transparency. The team built a front-end demo and an SDK, which is modular and can be easily integrated by others. A subgraph is provided, allowing for customization of the deployed escrow smart contracts. Zola also includes a privacy feature for ENS subdomains, which allows users to anonymously secure their subdomains without revealing their ownership. Despite its robust privacy features, Zola still offers full transparency via The Graph by showing open escrows and other basic information, effectively hiding only the identity of the involved parties.
Hackathon Advice:
The key tips for utilizing subgraphs at hackathons include starting early and aiming to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) within the first day. Don’t leave important features until the last few hours before the deadline. Subgraphs are user-friendly and quick to set up, but if you’re new to them, give yourself ample time to learn. Additionally, becoming a Graph Advocate is a great way to get more involved in The Graph community, especially for those interested in contributing further.
The Graph India (35:22)
The Graph India was founded in July 2023 with the motto “Lead with Empathy.” In the same month, they launched an initiative called Graph-A-Thon to connect with skilled hackers. By August, they had rolled out a program called “Navigating Web3 with The Graph India,” a 100% advocate-led initiative that included online sessions to foster a collaborative environment among Graph Advocates within India.
September saw the introduction of new branding, designed to reflect Indian culture and clarify the organization’s identity. They are hosting a series of 22 pan-India workshops. These workshops are structured in three segments: an introduction to The Graph network and its products, building subgraphs, and how to contribute as a Graph Advocate. Those who participate in these workshops can don themselves a “Graph Guru.” Looking ahead, The Graph India has plans for ETHIndia in December 2023, where they will assist with basic logistics and workshops.
The data collected from these initiatives will be useful for post-event follow-ups and for directly sharing messages from The Graph Foundation and Graph AdvocatesDAO to the larger community.
Collaboration is central to The Graph India, and the team believes in working closely with everyone in The Graph community and encourages community members to get involved!
Stay Tuned!
Join us next month for Community Talk #29!
Keep up to date by joining discussions in the forum, following The Graph on X(Formerly Twitter) or joining the Discord server.