What Is The Graph?

The Graph is a project whose protocol allows for querying of networks like Ethereum (ETH) and InterPlanetary File System. The protocol does the querying and collecting of the data without any interaction with a third party — in effect, in a secure and trustless manner.

The Graph Explained: The project claims that it makes querying fast, reliable and secure but also allows anyone to build and publish application programming interfaces (APIs) called subgraphs, which act as intermediaries and allow two applications to communicate with each other.

People Behind the Graph: The Graph’s co-founding team members are Yaniv Tal — who is the project lead, Brandon Ramirez — the research lead, and Jannis Pohlmann — the tech lead. The project also has professionals on board from the Ethereum Foundation, Puppet, Redhat, and Barclays plc BCS. 

Focus on APIs: Graph’s ability to let users create and make use of their own APIs has attracted the likes of Uniswap, a decentralized exchange, marketplace Decentraland, and Synthetix Exchange. 

What Sets The Graph Apart: The project’s token — GRT — is involved at each stage of the Graph economy, which comprises Indexers, Curators, and Delegators. Indexers operate the Graph’s nodes and stake GRT and make money whenever a query is processed. Curators decide what to index and are paid for that activity. Delegators get a part of the income earned by the indexer they delegate to without running a node themselves. The Graph is also exploring providing support for additional layer-one blockchains like Bitcoin (BTC), Polkadot (DOT), and NEAR, making it chain agnostic.

The Graph Through Numbers: The Graph is the 30th cryptocurrency by market capitalization. It has a market cap of $2.64 billion and has a circulating supply of 1.245 billion GRT.

The Graph performance relative to Bitcoin over the months. Courtesy of CoinMarketCap.

The Graph performance relative to the U.S. Dollar over the month. Courtesy of CoinMarketCap.

GRT is ahead of DASH in market cap but behind Neo (NEO) and Avalanche (AVAX). The cryptocurrency reached its all-time high of $2.88 on Feb 12, 2021.