Why do I believe in The Graph?
Among the thousands of crypto projects started in the past couple of years, The Graph stands out as a project with an entirely new type of proposition. It aims to open the doors for the mass adoption of Web3 by organizing Web3 data similar to what Google does for Web2 data. And while many blockchain projects claim they are the next big thing since sliced bread, only a selected few really have this potential — and I believe The Graph is one of them. Here’s why.
What is The Graph?
The Graph is an indexing protocol for organizing and efficiently accessing data from blockchains and storage networks like Ethereum and IPFS. Anyone can build and publish open APIs called subgraphs, making data easily accessible. The Graph has been running only since January 2019 but has already made a lasting impact in the crypto community, being used by some of the major projects like Uniswap and Synthetix. In the past six months The Graph’s usage has grown 10x, from 1 billion monthly queries in June to over 10 billion in November 2020, averaging over 350 million queries per day.
So why is The Graph important and why do I believe in it and support it?
The Graph is important because it’s one of the critical prerequisites for the wide adoption and development of Web3. Before The Graph, teams had to develop and operate proprietary indexing servers. This required significant engineering and hardware resources and broke the important security properties required for decentralization. The Graph provides a single indexing protocol that works with all Layer 1 blockchains so there is no need of different indexing protocols for every Layer 1 blockchain. Also, The Graph makes querying all data stored on open blockchain networks fast, reliable, and secure. Because of all these factors I believe The Graph is critical to Web3.
The Graph has a unique value proposition and I believe is a pioneer in its field — indexing and querying any type of data from blockchains and storage networks. This means the project has the first mover advantage and is in the best position to capitalize on it to become one of the pillars of Web3, used everywhere by everyone without even noticing.
In only a few months The Graph has created a large community of supporters — over 200 indexers running nodes in The Graph’s network, 1500+ curators evaluating subgraphs and creating content to popularize the project and over 16,000 Telegram group members. Besides the ever-growing community, some of the leading industry names also believe in The Graph and back it up — Framework Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Multicoin Capital, DTC Capital and others.
Finally, for me personally it’s very important that The Graph will enable and greatly accelerate the transition to Web3 because I think Web3 is one of the key forces for promoting democracy and individual rights and freedoms. Web3 will help limit the power of states and multinational corporations and return it to the people.
Globally, democracy is in decline and is constantly being assaulted by populists and wanna-be strongmen. State surveillance and curbing individuals’ rights and freedoms increased tremendously all around the world since the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only China monitors every move of its citizens but an increasing number of countries try to do the same, including in Europe and the U.S. As renowned historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari writes, today humanity faces a very important choice between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. As an open-minded citizen of the world, I believe we should choose citizen empowerment and act swiftly to protect our individual rights and freedoms from the ever-deeper-reaching tentacles of the big state and multinational corporations. I am sure The Graph will help a lot in this fight by accelerating the adoption of Web3 and this is what really inspires me to contribute to this great project. If you are of the same mind, join the great community of The Graph today!
