What is The Graph (GRT) | What is The Graph token | What is GRT token

Introduction

This page will explain everything you need to know in order to use the hosted offering of The Graph. Let’s first describe what The Graph is, and then explain how you can get started!

What The Graph Is

The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains, starting with Ethereum. It makes it possible to query data that is difficult to query directly.

For example, with the popular CryptoKitties dApp, it is relatively straightforward to ask the following questions:

How many CryptoKitties does a specific Ethereum account own?

When was a particular CryptoKitty born?

This is because these read patterns are directly supported by the the balanceOf and getKitty methods exposed by the contract.

However, other questions are more difficult to answer:

Who are the owners of the CryptoKitties born between January and February of 2018?

To answer this question, you have to process all Birth[ events](https://github.com/dapperlabs/cryptokitties-bounty/blob/master/contracts/KittyBase.sol#L15) and then call the ownerOf method for each CryptoKitty that has been born.

Even for this relatively simple question, it would take hours, or even days, for a decentralized application (dApp) running in a browser to get an answer. Indexing blockchain data is hard. Blockchain properties like finality, chain reorganizations, or uncled blocks complicate this process further, and make it not just time consuming but conceptually hard to retrieve correct query results from blockchain data.

The Graph solves this today with a hosted service that indexes blockchain data. Theses indexes (“subgraphs”) can then be queried with a standard GraphQL API. In the future, the hosted service will evolve into a fully decentralized protocol with the same capabilities. Both are backed by the open source implementation of Graph Node.

How The Graph Works

The Graph learns what and how to index Ethereum data based on subgraph descriptions, known as the subgraph manifest. The subgraph description defines the smart contracts of interest for a subgraph, the events in those contracts to pay attention to, and how to map event data to data that The Graph will store in its database.

Once you have written a subgraph manifest, you use the Graph CLI to store the definition in IPFS and tell the hosted service to start indexing data for that subgraph.

This diagram gives more detail about the flow of data once a subgraph manifest has been deployed, dealing with Ethereum transactions:

The flow follows these steps:

1. A decentralized application adds data to Ethereum through a transaction on a smart contract.
2. The smart contract emits one or more events while processing the transaction.
3. Graph Node continually scans Ethereum for new blocks and the data for your subgraph they may contain.
4. Graph Node finds Ethereum events for your subgraph in these blocks and runs the mapping handlers you provided. The mapping is a WASM module that creates or updates the data entities that Graph Node stores in response to Ethereum events.
5. The decentralized application queries the Graph Node for data indexed from the blockchain, using the node’s GraphQL endpoint. The Graph Node in turn translates the GraphQL queries into queries for its underlying data store in order to fetch this data, making use of the store’s indexing capabilities.
6. The decentralized application displays this data in a rich UI for end-users, which they use to issue new transactions on Ethereum.

What Is The Graph (GRT)?

The Graph is an indexing protocol for querying data for networks like Ethereum and IPFS, powering many applications in both DeFi and the broader Web3 ecosystem. Anyone can build and publish open APIs, called subgraphs, that applications can query using GraphQL to retrieve blockchain data. There is a hosted service in production that makes it easy for developers to get started building on The Graph and the decentralized network will be launching later this year. The Graph currently supports indexing data from Ethereum, IPFS and POA, with more networks coming soon.

To date, over 3,000 subgraphs have been deployed by thousands of developers, for DApps like Uniswap, Synthetix, Aragon, AAVE, Gnosis, Balancer, Livepeer, DAOstack, Decentraland and many others. The Graph usage has been growing at over 50% MoM and hit over 7 billion queries during the month of September 2020.

The Graph has a global community, including over 200 Indexer Nodes in the testnet and more than 2,000 Curators in the Curator Program as of October 2020. To fund network development, The Graph raised funds from community members, strategic VCs and influential individuals in the blockchain community including Coinbase Ventures, DCG, Framework, ParaFi Capital, CoinFund, DTC, Multicoin, Reciprocal Ventures, SPC, Tally Capital and others. The Graph Foundation also successfully completed a public GRT Sale with participation from 99 countries (not including the U.S.). To date as of November 2020, The Graph has raised ~$25M.

Who Are the Founders of The Graph?

The Graph team includes professionals from the Ethereum Foundation, OpenZeppelin, Decentraland, Orchid, MuleSoft leading up to the IPO and acquisition by Salesforce, Puppet, Redhat and Barclays.

The initial co-founding team includes Yaniv Tal (project lead), Brandon Ramirez (research lead) and Jannis Pohlmann (tech lead).

The founders have engineering backgrounds and have worked together for 5-8 years. Tal and Ramirez studied electrical engineering at USC and worked together at MuleSoft, an API developer tools company that underwent an IPO and sold to SalesForce.

They previously co-founded a developer tools startup together and have spent a significant portion of their careers working to optimize the API stack. At their last startup, the founders built a custom framework on an immutable database called DatomicDaytonic. The Graph was born from this vision to create immutable APIs and data access, using the GraphQL query language.

What Makes The Graph Unique?

The Graph is working to bring reliable decentralized public infrastructure to the mainstream market. To ensure economic security of The Graph Network and the integrity of data being queried, participants use Graph Token (GRT). GRT is a work token that is locked-up by Indexers, Curators and Delegators in order to provide indexing and curating services to the network.

GRT will be an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, used to allocate resources in the network. Active Indexers, Curators and Delegators can earn income from the network proportional to the amount of work they perform and their GRT stake. Indexers earn indexing rewards (new issuance) and query fees, while Curators earn a portion of query fees for the subgraphs they signal on. Delegators earn a portion of income earned by the Indexer they delegate to.

Related Pages:

For more information about cryptocurrencies, check out CMC’s educational portal, Alexandria.

Curious about the latest crypto news? Read CMC’s blog!

How Many The Graph (GNT) Coins Are There in Circulation?

Total GRT supply at mainnet launch will be 10 billion tokens, with an initial circulating supply of ~1,245,666,867 GRT. New token issuance in the form of indexing rewards will begin at 3% annually and is subject to future technical governance by The Graph Council. You can read about GRT token economics here and distribution information here.

How Is The Graph Network Secured?

The Graph has built an open data layer on top of blockchains: Indexers can run their own Ethereum archive nodes to run Graph Node, or they can use node operators like Infura or Alchemy.

Any analytics company can build an application to query subgraph data that’s indexed by The Graph. Subgraphs are open APIs to be able to pull data from the blockchain in the most seamless and efficient way.

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How and Where to Buy The Graph (GRT)?

GRT has been listed on a number of crypto exchanges, unlike other main cryptocurrencies, it cannot be directly purchased with fiats money. However, You can still easily buy this coin by first buying Bitcoin, ETH, USDT from any large exchanges and then transfer to the exchange that offers to trade this coin, in this guide article we will walk you through in detail the steps to buy GRT

You will have to first buy one of the major cryptocurrencies, usually either Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT)…

We will use Binance Exchange here as it is one of the largest crypto exchanges that accept fiat deposits.

Binance is a popular cryptocurrency exchange which was started in China but then moved their headquarters to the crypto-friendly Island of Malta in the EU. Binance is popular for its crypto to crypto exchange services. Binance exploded onto the scene in the mania of 2017 and has since gone on to become the top crypto exchange in the world.

Once you finished the KYC process. You will be asked to add a payment method. Here you can either choose to provide a credit/debit card or use a bank transfer, and buy one of the major cryptocurrencies, usually either Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT)

☞ SIGN UP ON BINANCE

Step by Step Guide : What is Binance | How to Create an account on Binance (Updated 2021)

After the deposit is confirmed you may then purchase GRT from the exchange.

Exchange: Binance, Huobi Global, OKEx, HBTC, and CoinTiger.

Apart from the exchange(s) above, there are a few popular crypto exchanges where they have decent daily trading volumes and a huge user base. This will ensure you will be able to sell your coins at any time and the fees will usually be lower. It is suggested that you also register on these exchanges since once GRT gets listed there it will attract a large amount of trading volumes from the users there, that means you will be having some great trading opportunities!

Top exchanges for token-coin trading. Follow instructions and make unlimited money

☞ Binance ☞ Bittrex ☞ Poloniex ☞ Bitfinex ☞ Huobi ☞ MXC ☞ ProBIT ☞ Gate.io ☞ Coinbase

Find more information GRT

☞ Website
☞ Explorer
☞ Source Code
☞ Social Channel
☞ Message Board
☞ Coinmarketcap

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