The Graph Builders Newsletter #13

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gm web3 builders,

Welcome to The Graph Builders Newsletter #13  for January 2024, where we share important builder-focused news coming from The Graph ecosystem from the past month.

Let’s dive in!

The Graph Builders Community

Consider joining these three builders communities and get to know other builders in The Graph ecosystem!

Build with Hackathoners in The Graph Builders Telegram

The Graph Builders Telegram Group currently has 180 members and has a #general channel for questions and collaboration, as well as specific channels for hackathon support. Most of the members joined during various hackathons, so just know that there are plenty of dedicated and curious web3 devs here!

Build with Redditors with r/GraphBuilders

r/GraphBuilders was just launched and aims to focus on sharing resources, tips, and discussions about building on The Graph. Find posts, blogs, workshops, and videos about subgraphs, substreams, GraphQL, and protocol insights.

Build with the Pros from The Graph BuildersDAO

Ready to step up your subgraph and Substreams skills? Check out The Graph BuildersDAO where experienced professionals work together to build production-ready subgraphs and Substreams for protocols and teams. Not ready to join the DAO just yet and just want to say hi? Join The Graph BuildersDAO Discord and get to know the team!

Ecosystem Updates

TODO: Upgrade from Hosted Service to Network Endpoints

More and more subgraphs are upgraded to The Graph Network and their hosted service equivalents stop receiving maintenance by their developers. We can already update our endpoints to use The Graph Network subgraphs:

If any builders are using the Hosted Service version of Uniswap v3, the endpoint will eventually deprecate in favor of The Graph Network version of Uniswap V3.

This means builders will soon have to change the endpoints used in their dapp from hosted service subgraph endpoints to The Graph Network subgraph endpoints.

If no The Graph Network version of a hosted subgraph is in existence, please reach out to the team that owns the hosted service version of the subgraph and point them to these docs to upgrade their subgraph to The Graph Network.

This announcement will go out in every Builders Newsletter to ensure clarity during the sunsetting of the Hosted Service.  If any builders see X’s (Tweets) of these reminders, please retweet, as it helps all builders in The Graph ecosystem!

The Graph Horizon Explained

Reading about The Graph New Era Roadmap and want to know more details about Horizon?

Check out The Graph Forum post written by Edge & Node Smart Contract Engineer and Researcher Pablo Carranza Velez titled “Graph Horizon Explained: a Proposal for the Evolution of the Protocol”.

TL;DR?

“In simple terms, Graph Horizon is about iterating upon the existing protocol to address things we’ve learned since the protocol launched and implement improvements we’ve heard suggested in conversations with many users and contributors, to ensure The Graph fulfills its mission and remains core and reliable infrastructure for web3.” - Pablo Carranza Vélez

New Releases

Graph-Node 0.34.0

Four key improvements are of note in graph-node 0.34.0.

Improved Query Performance with indexerHints and Automated Pruning

This new feature is generally considered a new best practice in subgraph development!

Why is this feature so important?

Subgraph pruning is an optimization technique Indexers regularly use to remove unnecessary data from subgraphs, thereby improving query performance. With indexerHints, pruning can now be configured to happen automatically.

To add this feature to our subgraphs, we can add indexerHints to our subgraph manifest as seen in this example manifest.

...
indexerHints:
  prune: auto
...

Please note that Time Travel Queries conflict with the use of indexerHints. Do not use these two features together as it will cause breaking changes.

Reach out to [email protected] if there are any questions surrounding indexerHints.

Improved Substreams-powered Subgraphs with Substreams as Subgraph Triggers - Beta

In this Beta feature release, builders can now directly run subgraph mappings on the data output from Substreams.

One use-case for this feature is to solve an issue where many eth_calls are required during indexing. While a subgraph must slow down to handle indexing eth_calls, a Substream does not slow down. Therefore, by using a Substream to ingest eth_calls and then transforming the data in a subgraph’s mappings, we have a subgraph that can index large quantities of eth_calls without issue.

Please reach out to [email protected] with any feedback concerning this feature.

Improved Indexing Accuracy with endBlock

If we know we only need to index a specific set of blocks, we can now define a subgraph’s endBlock in the manifest.

...
  startBlock: 4000000
  endBlock: 5000000
...

Check out the full release notes to see what else was released in graph-node 0.34.0!

Subgraph Radio

Building in web3 relies on rock-solid communication between distributed networks of individuals. Lucky for us, the GraphOps team just released Subgraph Radio, a brand new tool that aims to directly improve the communication between subgraph developers and Indexers.

Two key features for subgraph developers:

• Subgraph Upgrade Pre-sync: Allows subgraph developers to announce subgraph upgrades, enabling Indexers to synchronize new versions ahead of time, reducing friction and enhancing network responsiveness.
• Integrated Notifications & Monitoring: Compatibility with platforms like Slack, Discord, and Telegram for real-time alerts, coupled with comprehensive monitoring through detailed logs and metrics accessible via Prometheus and visualizable through Grafana dashboards.

One key feature for Indexers:

• Proof of Indexing (POI) Cross-Checking: A robust mechanism for Indexers to ensure data integrity, detect discrepancies rapidly, and mitigate potential conflicts within the network.

Get started with Subgraph Radio!

Hackathon Highlights

Blast Big Bang Competition is LIVE

The Blast Bing Bang Competition celebrates the builders!

Now that Subgraph Studio supports Blast-Testnet, builders in The Graph ecosystem have a huge advantage in getting their projects noticed. Build or show off your subgraph + dapp skills and get your project in front of over 100k users and $1.3B in TVL, as well as connect with investors.

There’s just under a month left in the competition so there’s still time to enter and compete 🥇

Learning Corner

File Data Sources Tutorial: Using Subgraphs to Index Off-Chain Data

Dive into a new blog release on File Data Sources written by Edge & Node Developer Relations Engineer Marcus Rein!

This blog was written to assist beginners and intermediate subgraph developers who want to jump into using a few advanced techniques such as usinFile Data Sources to index off-chain data from both Arweave and IPFS data simultaneously as well as passing context between handlers.

Read more about File Data Sources in the docs and get building some impressive File Data Source subgraphs!

The Graph Builders Office Hours - Thursdays 5pm UTC

Jump into The Graph Builders Office Hours every Thursday at 5pm UTC hosted by Edge & Node Developer Relations Engineer Kevin Jones in The Graph Discord.

Each session includes live workshops and Q&A discussions with developers who are building in The Graph Ecosystem.

Start building fast with all 20(!) The Graph Builders Office Hours workshops!

Here are a few recent episodes:

• Hackathon winner ‘Nazar’ built their project on Substreams
• Explore Graph Client’s subgraph composition features
• See how Clickhouse can be used as a Substreams sink
• Dive into new subgraph features - Initialization Handlers and Polling Handlers
• Build with Messari Standard Subgraphs

Developer Survey

Building The Graph Network is a collaborative effort, and the core devs would love to hear your feedback!

Thanks for reading and happy hacking! 💌

Marcus Rein

Developer Relations and Success

Edge & Node, working on The Graph

About The Graph

The Graph is the source of data and information for the decentralized internet. As the original decentralized data marketplace that introduced and standardized subgraphs, The Graph has become web3’s method of indexing and accessing blockchain data. Since its launch in 2018, tens of thousands of developers have built subgraphs for dapps across 45+ blockchains - including  Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, Celo, Fantom, Gnosis, and Avalanche.

As demand for data in web3 continues to grow, The Graph enters a New Era with a more expansive vision including new data services and query languages, ensuring the decentralized protocol can serve any use case - now and into the future.

Discover more about how The Graph is shaping the future of decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) and stay connected with the community. Follow The Graph on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Medium. Join the community on The Graph’s Telegram, join technical discussions on The Graph’s Discord.

The Graph Foundation oversees The Graph Network. The Graph Foundation is overseen by the Technical Council. Edge & Node, StreamingFast, Semiotic Labs, The Guild, Messari, GraphOps, Pinax and Geo are eight of the many organizations within The Graph ecosystem.