What is The Graph
Launched with a public main net deployment and token generation event in Oct 2020, The Graph (GRT) is an Ethereum (ETH) smart token for an indexing protocol that organizes blockchain data for dApp developers. Similar to the way Google, Yahoo, Bing, or DuckDuckGo index world wide web page content, the GRT network is designed to facilitate, incentivize, and support the indexing of essential data from multiple decentralized blockchain ecosystems, including Ethereum and Interplanetary File System.
IPFS works in tandem with the Filecoin (FIL) blockchain as a payment channel for users who venture computer storage space and computational power to supply the file system with storage and validate, secure, and maintain its blockchain. The Graph indexes pertinent data from these blockchains and groups them together into buckets that any other user on the network can call to use in their dApps.
These "buckets" are open applications programming interfaces (APIs) that anyone can access. GRT price is a function of network usage, supply/demand economics, and broader global strategic factors. At the time of publication, GRT is in the middle of the Top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, and graph markets include Binance, OKEx, Huobi Global, CoinTiger, and FTX.
The Graph Founders
The Graph protocol was envisioned, created, and launched by co-founders Jannis Pohlmann (tech lead), Brandon Ramirez (research lead), Yaniv Tal (project lead). After painfully learning firsthand about how complex and difficult is to build new decentralized applications for the Ethereum blockchain, the partners decided to get to work creating a reliable, easily accessible, decentralized index of blockchain info for the Ethereum chain.
They wanted to make it easy for developers to specify how Ethereum and Filecoin blockchain info is structured for any other client on the blockchain to query with GraphQL (an open-source data query language for APIs developed by Facebook in 2012 for internal use and first published in 2015). Clients use GRT coins for payment when calling on The Graph blockchain nodes to act as servers to retrieve and serve these data.
The Graph Foundation closed $5 million in funding in June 2020 from crypto investors including Framework Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Multicoin Capital, and Digital Currency Group. That followed a $2.5 million seed fund round that January by Multicoin Capital, for a total $7.5 million raised by the project prior to the initial coin offering (ICO). After that, The Graph raised $12 million in a GRT token public sale in Oct 2020, an ICO that didn't include U.S. investors over regulatory compliance concerns.
How Does GRT Work
The Graph blockchain and GRT coin are used by developers to create open APIs, called subgraphs on the Graph. That allows blockchain and dApp developers to gather and organize data about the distributed ecosystem. The graph markets itself as a sort of DIY, open-source, blockchain-powered search and analytics engine for the Ethereum and Filecoin blockchains. Any developer can plug into the ecosystem and call organized data about the blockchain using GraphQL, and pay other nodes on the network for gathering and hosting the requested information using The Graph tokens.
Because there is a virtually limitless number of subgraphs, the ecosystem is designed with built-in incentive channels for curators to find and curate the ones other developers might be most likely to use. The Graph users can earn GRT that way, by organizing blockchain data, which helps decentralized software programmers to collaborate over decentralized software.
Node operators serve index results to meet client requests for data in exchange for GRT tokens. Nodes on The Graph sell computer storage space and information according to a decentralized protocol, using cryptographically validated tokens and ledgers. Investors also buy and trade these tokens to speculate on movements in the GRT price at exchange.
The Graph Security
In the realm of cryptocurrency and blockchain, The Graph is a second layer technology that lives on top of other blockchains like Ethereum and Filecoin chains, and features specifically structured and curated data, stored and retrieved using an open-source protocol for decentralized network collaboration.
The protocol is designed so that indexing nodes can run Ethereum archive nodes to deploy Graph Node from their computer. It also includes integrated functionality for node operators who prefer to use alternatives like Infura or Alchemy. Its security is built into its open design philosophy, as it is designed to operate in the open and process requests from any computer using the protocol.
