Do you remember what the internet was like before search engines like Google?
Do you remember browsing the web by going to portal sites (like Yahoo!) and clicking through indexes to find the website you wanted?
Today, we are all used to search engines helping us find data on the internet. Now, a similar mechanism to conveniently search blockchain data is emerging.
Looking back, finding information on the internet used to rely on indexes created by other users or portals (like Fan-Tien, Yahoo!, etc.). You had to click from site to site, reading article by article, just to find information. This is nothing like today, where search engines like Google and Yahoo! can find exactly what you need from a vast sea of information with just a few keywords.
The blockchain industry is booming. With this explosive growth, the amount of daily on-chain data and accumulated historical data is rapidly increasing. However, the decentralized nature of blockchains and smart contracts makes searching blockchain data very different from searching the internet.
Furthermore, accessing blockchain data requires paying gas fees. With Ethereum gas fees remaining high, the cost of querying data can be very expensive.
The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data from networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called "subgraphs," which applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS, and POA, with more networks coming soon. To date, thousands of developers have deployed over 3,000 subgraphs for DApps like Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, AAVE, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, Decentraland, and many more.
In simple terms, The Graph provides a protocol that allows anyone to participate in building indexes. You can think of it as a "reverse oracle"—it indexes on-chain data in a decentralized way for off-chain viewing, similar to a decentralized Etherscan or BscScan.
To maintain this decentralized spirit and ensure the protocol's long-term operation through voluntary participation, The Graph issued the GRT Token (GRT). GRT is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain.
There are four main roles in The Graph Network. Active Indexers, Curators, and Delegators can earn income from the data network, proportional to their work and the amount of GRT they stake. Consumers, on the other hand, pay GRT to query this data.
Indexers: Indexers run nodes and must stake GRT. Their function is to index subgraphs. They can then earn fees from API calls and participate in network governance.
Consumers: These are the users who pay (in GRT) for the API calls to query data.
Curators: Curators stake GRT to vote (or "signal") on which subgraphs are high-quality and worth indexing, indicating to Indexers which ones should be prioritized.
Delegators: Delegators simply stake their GRT to an Indexer to earn a portion of the Indexer's rewards without running a node themselves.
Overall, the price of the GRT token is positively correlated with the growth of the blockchain and DeFi sectors. Its price is also linked to the growth of its own service. How frequently do users use its API service? Is the user base expanding? Can The Graph Network achieve long-term, large-scale growth? All these factors are related to its token price.
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