"What Google does for search, The Graph does for blockchains."
Subgraphs are the lifeblood of the network. Consumers make queries (or data requests) to relay info like price, volume, and liquidity. They temporarily lived on a hosted service, allowing for free deployment while the decentralized network was being built out.
$GRT is the backbone of the Graph ecosystem, where Indexers play a crucial role by hosting subgraphs and earning issuance and query fees. Becoming an Indexer requires node operators to post a minimum self-bond of 100k tokens.
Curators, on the other hand, deposit $GRT to subgraph bonding curves and earn a portion of query fees and curation rewards. As more $GRT is deposited into a subgraph, the more valuable the data is perceived to be, and the more query fees it is expected to earn.
For Delegators, delegating $GRT to an Indexer is an opportunity to earn a portion of query fees and issuance without running a node. The process is simple and accessible for non-technical users, as they can securely participate in the network. Indexes set a fixed Fee and Reward percentage, which they keep before passing earnings to Delegators.
So where does demand come in?
- Consumers buy $GRT to pay for queries
- Indexers stake $GRT to run a node
- Curators deposit $GRT to subgraph bonding curves
- Delegators delegate $GRT to Indexers
Plus, a % of query fees, withdraw taxes and unclaimed rebates are burned.
Looking ahead, I note that the tokenomics of the project very bad. This should be borne in mind when assessing its overall potential.
Source: Twitter.com/graphprotocol; thegraph.com; The Graph Docs. Show Less
