The Graph

Blockchains are optimised for writing and verification, not for reading. Asking a simple question — every transfer involving this address, all positions in this pool — means scanning the chain, which no application can do per request. The Graph turns that into an indexing market where the work is done once and sold as queries.

Subgraphs define what gets indexed

A subgraph specifies which contract events matter and how to organise them into a queryable schema. Anyone can publish one, and indexers choose which to serve. This makes indexing an open market rather than infrastructure each application must run privately — the same shift from self-hosting to shared service that happened across web infrastructure generally.

Three roles, all staking

Indexers run the infrastructure and stake GRT against serving correct results. Curators signal which subgraphs are worth indexing by staking on them and earn from query fees if they are right. Delegators stake to indexers without operating anything. Each role carries capital at risk against a distinct failure, which is a more careful design than a single undifferentiated staking pool.

Disputes make wrong answers expensive

An indexer serving incorrect data can be challenged, with the dispute resolved and stake slashed if the challenge succeeds. Without that, an indexer could return arbitrary results and no consumer would know — query correctness is not self-evident the way a block validation is.

Why decentralised indexing matters

Most applications relying on a single centralised indexer inherit an outage or a censorship decision from it. That has happened, and it makes an otherwise decentralised application unusable. Distributing the read path addresses a genuine single point of failure that is easy to overlook because it is not on-chain.

Where demand comes from

GRT is paid for queries and staked across all three roles. Demand tracks how much data applications actually consume, which makes it one of the more usage-linked tokens in the sector — subject to the same competitive pressure from free centralised alternatives that every paid infrastructure faces.