The Graph (GRT)

The Graph (native token: GRT) is an open-source, decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains, often described as a search and data-access layer for Web3 that plays a role analogous to the one search-and-indexing services play for the traditional web.¹² Developers use The Graph to build and publish open APIs called "subgraphs" that define how data from a blockchain should be extracted, organized, and served, after which applications can retrieve that data using GraphQL queries rather than building and operating their own indexing infrastructure.¹³ The project was founded in 2018 by Yaniv Tal, Brandon Ramirez, and Jannis Pohlmann, whose experience building on Ethereum convinced them that the difficulty of reliably reading on-chain data was a major obstacle to decentralized-application development.²⁴

As of September 2026, GRT traded at approximately $0.016, with a market capitalization of roughly $180 million, placing the token far outside the top tier of cryptocurrencies by market value and more than 99% below its February 2021 all-time high of about $2.84.⁵⁶

Overview

Blockchains store data in a form that is well suited to verifying transactions, but poorly suited to answering the kinds of questions applications commonly need, such as a user's full transaction history, aggregate balances across many contracts, or the current state of a decentralized-finance market.¹³ Extracting and organizing that data historically required each project to run its own indexing servers, a costly and error-prone undertaking that The Graph was designed to replace with shared, reusable infrastructure.¹³

Ticker	GRT
Category	Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Website	https://thegraph.com/
Twitter	@graphprotocol
Telegram	graphprotocol
Reddit	https://www.reddit.com/r/thegraph
Contract Addresses
ethereum	0xc9...a7Copied!
near-protocol	c9...arCopied!
polygon-pos	0x5f...31Copied!
arbitrum-one	0x96...c7Copied!
harmony-shard-0	0x00...ffCopied!
avalanche	0x8a...b9Copied!
energi	0x77...d5Copied!
sora	0x00...55Copied!

The protocol organizes this work around subgraphs, which are open specifications describing which smart-contract events and data a developer wants indexed and how that data should be structured for querying.¹³ Once deployed, a subgraph is indexed by network participants and exposed through a GraphQL endpoint that any application can query, allowing many projects to draw on the same indexed data instead of duplicating the effort.¹³ The Graph began as a centrally operated "hosted service" and progressively transitioned to a decentralized network in which independent operators are compensated in GRT for indexing subgraphs and serving queries.²⁷

History

Founding and early development (2018–2019)

The Graph was started in 2018 by Yaniv Tal, Brandon Ramirez, and Jannis Pohlmann, who had previously worked together on developer-tooling projects and grew frustrated by how hard it was to build applications that needed to read structured data from Ethereum.²⁴ Their solution was a protocol that would let developers define reusable indexing specifications (subgraphs) and query the resulting data through GraphQL, a widely used query language originally developed for conventional web applications.¹⁴ An early hosted version of the service allowed developers to deploy subgraphs on infrastructure operated by the team, which helped the protocol gain adoption among decentralized-finance and other Ethereum projects while the decentralized network was still under construction.²⁷

Token sale and mainnet launch (2020)

In October 2020, The Graph Foundation conducted a public sale of the GRT token, selling 400 million tokens and raising approximately $12 million, while reporting that the sale reached thousands of participants and excluded U.S. investors for regulatory-compliance reasons.⁸⁹ The Graph's decentralized network launched on Ethereum mainnet in December 2020, introducing the on-chain roles of indexers, curators, and delegators, through which participants would stake GRT to index subgraphs, signal on their quality, and share in rewards.²⁷

Transition to a decentralized network (2021–2024)

For several years after mainnet launch, The Graph operated a hybrid model, where many applications continued to rely on the free, centrally run hosted service while the decentralized network matured and gradually added support for indexing subgraphs across a growing set of blockchains.²⁷ Beginning in 2023, the core teams announced a phased plan, branded "Sunrise", to migrate subgraphs off the hosted service and onto the decentralized network, and the hosted service was fully sunset on June 12, 2024, after which queries were served through the decentralized Graph Network.⁷¹⁰ The migration marked the completion of the project's long-stated goal of removing its reliance on centralized infrastructure.⁷¹⁰

Ecosystem expansion (2024–2026)

Following the transition, development of the protocol became more distributed across multiple independent core teams rather than a single company, and the network expanded beyond Ethereum-style indexing.²¹¹ The Graph added Substreams, a high-throughput data-streaming technology, and introduced additional data services and standardized APIs aimed at broadening the protocol's use beyond subgraphs, including offerings marketed toward artificial-intelligence and analytics applications.²¹¹ Over this period, the network came to support indexing across a large number of chains, both EVM-compatible networks such as Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Base, and BNB Chain, and non-EVM networks such as Solana and Near, positioning The Graph as multi-chain data infrastructure.²¹¹

Technical design

Subgraphs and GraphQL

A subgraph is a manifest that specifies which smart contracts to watch, which events and functions to track, and how to transform the resulting on-chain data into entities that can be queried.¹³ Once deployed and indexed, the subgraph is exposed as a GraphQL API, allowing applications to request precisely the data they need in a single query; because subgraphs are open, different applications can reuse the same subgraph rather than each building bespoke indexing pipelines.¹³ This reusability is central to The Graph's value proposition of shared, public data infrastructure for decentralized applications.¹³

Network roles

The decentralized network coordinates several types of participant, each staking or spending GRT.²¹² Indexers operate the nodes that index subgraphs and serve queries, and are required to stake GRT to participate, an amount set at a substantial minimum self-stake, earning query fees and a share of protocol issuance in return, subject to slashing if they serve incorrect data.¹¹¹² Curators signal on subgraphs they judge to be valuable by depositing GRT, which helps indexers decide what to index and entitles curators to a share of future query fees, while paying a curation tax when they signal.¹¹¹² Delegators, who do not run infrastructure, stake GRT by delegating it to indexers and share in the rewards those indexers earn, paying a small delegation tax.¹¹¹² Consumers, including applications and developers, pay GRT for the queries they make.²¹²

Substreams and additional data services

Beyond classic subgraphs, The Graph added Substreams, a technology for high-performance, parallelized processing of blockchain data intended to support real-time and large-scale data pipelines, and it has introduced further data services and standardized token- and data-access APIs.²¹¹ These additions reflect an effort to reposition the protocol from a narrowly focused subgraph-indexing service into broader data infrastructure serving analytics and, increasingly, artificial-intelligence use cases.¹¹

Tokenomics

GRT launched with a genesis supply of 10 billion tokens and is used throughout the network for staking, delegation, curation signaling, and payment for queries.⁸¹² New GRT is issued as indexing rewards at an annual rate set around 3% of supply, which is distributed to indexers and the delegators who back them; the protocol simultaneously burns GRT through mechanisms including a portion of query fees, the curation tax, and the delegation tax, which partially or wholly offsets issuance during periods of strong query demand.¹¹¹² Because issuance is continuous while burns depend on network usage, GRT's supply has grown modestly above its 10-billion genesis figure, and the balance between issuance and burning has been a recurring point of analysis for the token's long-run inflation.¹¹¹² The design intent is that as real query demand grows, fee burns increasingly counteract issuance, moving the token toward lower net inflation.¹¹¹²

Governance and organization

The Graph has been developed by several core teams working alongside The Graph Foundation, which supports the ecosystem through grants and stewardship, while the founding team's company, Edge & Node, served as an original and prominent core developer before additional independent teams took on parts of protocol development over time.²¹¹ The Graph Council, a multi-stakeholder body, oversees key protocol parameters, the treasury, and grant decisions, with progressive decentralization of both its infrastructure and its governance serving as guiding principles for the project.²¹¹ As with many token-governed protocols, the degree to which decision-making is genuinely distributed among token holders versus concentrated among founding teams and large stakeholders has been a subject of ongoing discussion.²¹¹

Market history

GRT began trading after its mainnet launch in December 2020 and rose rapidly during the early 2021 crypto bull market, reaching an all-time high of approximately $2.84 on February 12, 2021.⁵⁶ The token subsequently declined sharply through the bear market and failed to reclaim its former highs in later cycles; by September 2026, it traded around $0.016 with a market capitalization near $180 million, sitting more than 99% below its 2021 peak.⁵⁶ This steep and sustained drawdown, despite the continued growth of the network's technical footprint and query volumes, has made GRT a frequently cited example of the gap that can emerge between a crypto project's underlying usage and its token price.⁵⁶

Criticism and risks

The Graph has faced several criticisms. Because query fees on the network have historically been low relative to protocol issuance, analysts have questioned whether fee revenue can sustainably reward indexers without ongoing token inflation, raising concerns about the long-term economic model.¹¹¹² The protocol also contends with competition from centralized data providers, as many applications operate their own indexers or rely on commercial API services rather than paying for decentralized queries, as well as from alternative blockchain data platforms, which limits the demand flowing to the network.²¹¹ The phaseout of the free hosted service in 2024, although a milestone for decentralization, forced developers to migrate their subgraphs and adapt to a paid decentralized model, causing disruption for certain projects.⁷¹⁰ Finally, GRT's prolonged price decline and continuous token issuance have weighed on sentiment and, much like other inflationary staking tokens, sparked scrutiny over whether network growth can genuinely create value for token holders.⁵¹¹

Positive developments and outlook

Supporters of The Graph point to its status as one of the earliest and most widely adopted data-indexing protocols in Web3, its usage across a diverse range of decentralized applications, and the large volume of queries handled by the network as proof of genuine utility rather than pure speculation.¹² Completing the migration to a fully decentralized network in 2024 achieved a key long-term goal, and the introduction of Substreams alongside other data services, paired with a push into analytics and artificial intelligence use cases, has expanded the protocol's addressable market beyond its original subgraph-indexing niche.⁷¹¹ The protocol's multi-chain support and role as shared infrastructure maintain its relevance across numerous ecosystems.²¹¹ Whether this technical adoption and expanding product suite will ultimately generate sufficient query revenue and demand to support the GRT token, or if The Graph will remain a heavily utilized network whose token continues to struggle against competition and issuance, remained an open question among analysts as of late 2026.⁶¹¹

References