TL;DR - Indexer Office Hours: New Foundation MandateThe big picture: The multi-core-dev era is over, and the Edge & Node Labs deal is dead (Council voted no). The Foundation is now becoming a Labs-like entity itself — direct ownership of product, protocol, and network. How we got here:
Core dev agreements (>$150M total) were financially untenable; realignment attempts failed
E&N was the obvious Labs partner → declined late 2025 → Foundation wrote its own roadmap (Feb 2026) → E&N came back with a counter-proposal → months of negotiation → Council voted No
E&N is now transitioning its network operations (and costs) over to the Foundation
What changes:
Foundation hiring an in-house eng team (some existing staff cut to make room); Pedro → Head of Product, Orion → Head of Protocol & Network
GIP: redirect 20% of annual issuance to the Foundation (Council-overseen) to fund the new mandate
Economics — heads up, indexers:
Rewards Eligibility Oracle goes live TODAY — check the dashboard. Immediately reclaims 15.2% of rewards from indexers below minimum criteria (1 query served, 5 of 28 days). Criteria will tighten toward ~27% total reclaimed
Liquid staking (ST-GRT) live as of yesterday
DIPS plumbing deployed, ready to enable
Chain integrations becoming a metered data service — that revenue (>50% of ecosystem value) finally flows through the protocol
New gateway operators (incl. former “competitors”) already sending queries to indexers
Product roadmap:
Priority 1: smooth E&N transition, Studio 100% network-powered via DIPS
Coming: “Memory for AI” data service (agent memory, built on subgraphs), Substreams data service, RPC service (finally), multi-product Studio, subscription pricing
Positioning The Graph as a neutral audit layer for institutional privacy/confidentiality use cases
Misc: Nick open to publishing Foundation salaries pending legal check. Council product steering committee starting up.
Thanks to Ford for explaining on The Discord what has happened between the Foundation and E&N. For sure as part of the public, we are not aware of all what has happened between the foundation and E&N, but what is a reality, is that the Graph as a whole is a weakened in this context, and now the doors of the unknown are opened. @NickH as a member of the Graph community, I would appreciate if you can explain in better terms why we have reached this situation, with such a fragmented ecosystem ? Why an agreement with E&N has not been reached for the sake of the ecosystem ? In retrospective, I’m reading now that the roadmap which has been presented in the Q2 2026 community call was built in isolation without the agreement of E&N. How is that possible that we are touching the bottom in this fashion ? (Is it the bottom ? I hope !)
Hey @Redallica. Thanks for this post. I was not aware of Ford’s Discord post until you mentioned it here and tagged me - thank you! I found the post and read it (are we referencing the same post?). If so, then: first, I respect Ford a lot - he’s a Graph OG who is responsible for a lot of The Graph’s success - but, second, I do not agree with the perspective he shared in his Discord post.
I recently shared my perspective in two IOH sessions on some of these topics. I am happy to meet again or do a dedicated community event in the Discord to provide more perspective or share additional information. I’d rather not get into a Forum/Discord posts debate with anyone on some of these issues… I simply don’t believe posting to an online messaging board is the most effective way to address these concerns or disagreements.
Would you be interested in a Discord event for a community update? If not, then can you tell me the specific questions you want answers to and I will do my best to share an answer here.
I strongly urge anyone interested in these topics not to jump to conclusions until you have received all perspectives. The Foundation isn’t perfect (never has been; no one is), but we’d appreciate the opportunity to share our perspective and provide more information to anyone who wants to make an informed assessment.
Rewards Eligibility Oracle goes live TODAY — check the dashboard. Immediately reclaims 15.2% of rewards from indexers below minimum criteria (1 query served, 5 of 28 days). Criteria will tighten toward ~27% total reclaimed