In brief
- The Graph Protocol helps companies find the blockchain data they’re looking for.
- It is selling GRT tokens ahead of its network launch.
- GRT buyers will help index and curate data and secure the network.
The Graph Protocol, which helps people find and sort blockchain data, today announced the release of its own ERC20 token as it prepares to launch The Graph Network this year.
Via the October 22-24 GRT token sale on the Ethereum blockchain, The Graph will sell up to 400 million GRT of the 10 billion initial token supply at $0.03 cents a pop.
The Graph allows blockchain companies to create and use their own APIs, or subgraphs. APIs are a way that applications talk to each other to get data. The crypto price charts you read? Those all come from one website sending a query to another for that data.
The Graph is already used by a variety of Web 3.0 applications, including decentralized exchange Uniswap and crypto price provider CoinGecko.
According to a release today, The Graph Network will be “a decentralized network of Indexers, Curators, and Delegators working together to organize the world’s blockchain data, serve applications, and accelerate the transition to a decentralized future.”
As such, the token sale is looking to spread the ERC20 token among three types of users:
- Indexers, who operate the network’s nodes and stake GRT, earning rewards and fees when consumers make a query
- Curators, including folks deciding what Ethereum data to index and how to store that data in “subgraphs”. They deposit GRT and earn query fees from specific subgraphs
- Delegators, non-technical supporters who want to secure the network without running a node. They delegate their GRT to indexers in exchange for a cut of the profits
Not everyone is earning GRT, obviously. Consumers pay the query fees to get the data they’re looking for.
Registration for the token sale, which is only open to non-US participants, closes on the 15th.