The Graph Foundation Secures $50 Million in Strategic GRT Sale to Decentralize Web3
The Graph Foundation has secured $50 million through a strategic GRT sale from its treasury in order to aggressively onboard the brightest minds in web3. The sale will help advance The Graph’s progress to enable truly verifiable indexing and querying and grow the protocol for subgraph developers’ needs. This new funding will support grants for core development efforts, protocol R&D and provide a runway for the strategic initiatives of the Foundation, whose treasury is overseen by The Graph Council.
Over the next two years, The Graph Foundation will identify dedicated, talented teams to solve problems of centralization, security, and scalability to join The Graph ecosystem. In order to shepherd adoption of web3 across the industry and bolster web3’s decentralization, The Graph Foundation is looking for teams that will focus on improving node infrastructure, database scaling, zero-knowledge proofs, verifiability, multi-blockchain, protocol economics research, subgraph API development, and more. This builds upon the achievements of existing core development teams , , , and , which have expanded The Graph ecosystem after joining last year alongside .
“The Graph has the potential to become a generational protocol. We expect to see an exponential increase in the data being stored on blockchains, especially given the pace at which the trillion dollar market has been growing over the past year. The Graph is one of the most important pillars of the decentralized web.”
With the support of , a world-renowned fund with over two decades of experience supporting emerging internet technologies, The Graph Foundation will identify the most talented developer teams in the world to join The Graph ecosystem and solve the issues beleaguering the web3 stack. In addition to Tiger Global, the fundraise was also joined by and , alongside original Ethereum supporter and .
These supporters help The Graph ecosystem by participating in the network, backing the community and advocating for the adoption of web3—worldwide. Blockwall connects The Graph ecosystem across Europe, while Fenbushi Capital doubles down on global ecosystem collaboration by increasing participation in Asia. Fintech Collective bridges the gap between both traditional technology and financial technology, bringing valuable experience championing new tech. Together, the five bring vital tech relationships that the ecosystem will leverage to identify the world’s top web development talent.
These five funds across a range of geographies represent a strategic mix of talent and decades of insight accelerating globally influential technologies. The Foundation is incredibly excited to welcome new supporters into the community to expand The Graph’s global reach.
“We are very impressed by the growth of The Graph since the Mainnet launch. As a decentralized indexing protocol for web3, we believe that The Graph will be one of the most important infrastructure protocols for entire dapp ecosystems. We are glad to be the supporters of The Graph and we hope to support the web3 future together.”
Growth of The Graph Ecosystem
In the last year, The Graph Foundation awarded four new core dev grants to , , and to collaborate on The Graph’s roadmap. This includes focus on Indexer and node infrastructure improvements, subgraph tooling, more efficient data streaming, cryptography and more. Bringing in new core development teams to The Graph has been incredibly impactful for moving forward on the multi-disciplinary roadmap, allowing the community to bring in experts in their fields to focus on sustained protocol development.
The Graph ecosystem also welcomed more developers building and using subgraphs—this number has consistently grown by ~14% MoM (550% YoY) across the hosted service and the network. Dapps that have migrated to the network have generated over 265,000 GRT in query fees to date.
“The responsibility of true decentralization doesn’t rely solely on the protocols themselves, but on the full infrastructure stack, and all the way up to the interfaces that users connect with. We consistently hear from our portfolio companies that they prefer to utilize only one decentralized API environment, The Graph, for blockchain data. We are excited to back a team that continues to push the boundaries for indexing the web3 world at scale and believe The Graph will continue to cement its position as critical infrastructure for DeFi, NFTs, DAOs and beyond.”
Sustainable and strategic growth
As more and more developers enter the web3 space, it is crucial that the mistakes of web2 are not repeated. Criticisms of centralization in web3, like , are justified, and the time to unbundle all of the centralized points of failure in web3 is now. Centralized servers, off-chain NFT metadata, and burdensome end-user state verification are a few of the issues holding web3 back from being truly decentralized.
With the continued expansion of The Graph ecosystem, The Graph Foundation is focused on reinforcing that growth in a sustainable way. The Foundation collaborates with The Graph Council to oversee a that is allocated to the community’s development initiatives to expand The Graph. The Graph Network’s growing ecosystem will continue to reinforce The Graph as an integral piece of web3 infrastructure, further empowering the decentralized community to build across DeFi, DAOs, NFTs, and much more.
In addition to supporting grants for core development, over ~$9 million in grants were allocated in the first year of The Graph Grants, to fund protocol research, Indexer and subgraph tooling, new subgraphs and dapps, and a range of community and ecosystem initiatives.
“The Graph provides mission-critical decentralized infrastructure for web3 applications. The protocol’s growth has been astonishing, and this is just the beginning of their journey. Web3 is quickly becoming a multi-chain ecosystem and one of the most compelling features of The Graph is its ability to work across blockchains. The Graph is the unifying layer of web3, and will continue integrating more blockchains, including Solana and Cosmos, as the ecosystem grows.”
The Graph’s roadmap and ecosystem growth is aligned to address web3’s pain points and its opportunities for improvement. One issue that is already being addressed is security of retrieving blockchain data, with verifiable indexing and querying. Two development teams, Edge & Node and Semiotic, are applying cryptography to ensure that all data requested by web3 dapps is . The Graph’s roadmap is vast and multidisciplinary, this is why The Graph Foundation is looking to utilize the funding to bring on up to five additional development teams over the next two years to unbundle centralization in web3.
The Graph Foundation is calling upon the brightest, most motivated minds across web2 and web3. This is your chance to join the mission to decentralize the web. Whether your team is crypto native, or just jumping over from web2, all are welcome to contribute to the future of the internet.
If you are interested in working core development, tooling, subgraphs or community efforts - apply for a grant . You do not need a technical background to receive a grant and we welcome contributors who are passionate about the mission.
Not a developer, but want to join these cutting-edge, leading funds by immersing yourself in the ecosystem? Jumpstart your participation by , helping to secure the network by delegating GRT to an array of Indexers.
About 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 for dapps across 70+ blockchains - including Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, Celo, Fantom, Gnosis, and Avalanche.
As demand for data in web3 continues to grow, The Graph enters a 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 , , , , , and . Join the community on The Graph’s , join technical discussions on The Graph’s .
oversees The Graph Network. The Graph Foundation is overseen by the . , , , , , and are eight of the many organizations within The Graph ecosystem.
