A New Mandate for The Graph Foundation
Since its inception in 2018, The Graph has successfully established itself as the industry’s leading protocol for blockchain data infrastructure - the critical layer that makes the world's onchain data accessible. It was built on a core belief: data should be open and permissionless. That belief is not incidental to The Graph. It is the reason The Graph exists.
Throughout that time, The Graph Foundation's has been to steward the health and growth of that protocol and ecosystem to ensure that belief is made real in the world. The Foundation’s mandate spanned strategic treasury management, facilitating alignment, and accountability among contributors. The Foundation team worked as the credibly-neutral steward in an ecosystem deliberately structudred so that participants pursuing their own interests, within the right incentive framework, would ultimately produce value for users.
Earlier this year, the Foundation published the - the first installment in a two-part series detailing the protocol's future. This second post concludes that series by pairing the technical vision with the official announcement of The Graph Foundation’s new operating mandate.
The Roadmap Set the Stage
If you read the Technical Roadmap, you already have more context than you might realize. That post wasn't just a technical vision. It also described a more expansive view of The Graph - a vision characterized by new data services, changes to issuance, and an economic model rebuilt to reward and incentivize real network participation. Early signals of many operational and ecosystem changes to come.
For quick context, the technical roadmap shared the Foundation’s belief that The Graph needs to look beyond Subgraphs - to data services that span real-time data streaming, token analytics, institutional-grade infrastructure, and AI-native access - alongside other important changes to how issuance, incentives, and resources get allocated to support this expansive view.
As an industry pioneer, The Graph defined decentralized data indexing and established Subgraphs as the standard for onchain data - a milestone built by some of the most dedicated contributors in web3. However, that very breakthrough transformed indexing into a fiercely contested landscape. Today, market maturity, rapidly shifting user demands, and aggressive competition require an equally decisive evolution in how the protocol operates.
What brought The Graph to the forefront initially must now drive its future: an uncompromising focus on speed, execution velocity, innovation, and creating value for users. Delivering on that standard also necessitates a fundamental shift in how the Foundation operates. The Foundation must evolve its mandate from passive underwriter supporting external development to directly building, maintaining, and scaling The Graph Network and protocol.
From Coordinator to Operator
When the Foundation’s mandate was originally written, stewardship meant something specific: managing the treasury responsibly, funding independent contributors, and remaining credibly neutral across the ecosystem. This was the standard playbook across web3 foundations, and it made sense during The Graph’s formative years - when the priority was establishing indexing standards, attracting contributors through grants, and coordinating independent development teams. Today, industry maturation and shifting market dynamics mean that that original approach is no longer sustainable.
The multi-core-developer model relied on large, long-term grants to independent teams tasked with building novel web3 solutions. While this approach may have scaled the protocol initially, it no longer delivers the competitive edge required in today’s market.
A pivot is required. The Foundation must place greater emphasis on the strategic allocation of capital alongside a decisive directive to build The Graph, support network participants, and serve users. This necessitates an evolved mandate: stepping into the protocol directly as an operator, maintainer, and developer. Rather than coordinating and underwriting third-party roadmaps from a distance, the Foundation must take direct responsibility for executing The Graph’s long-term vision.
Executing this pivot requires organizational evolution, in-house technical capabilities, and dedicated resourcing. An from the Foundation seeks to redirect 20% of protocol issuance to support these expanded responsibilities - a common funding mechanism in other protocol ecosystems. In parallel, the Foundation is actively restructuring internally to onboard a dedicated team capable of operating and maintaining the protocol directly, reducing reliance on external dependencies.
The rationale is clear: evolving market dynamics and coordination bottlenecks require a decisive departure from the past paradigm. It is time to transition the Foundation from passive coordinator to an active catalyst for growth.
A Catalyst for Growth
Stepping into an operator role brings greater velocity, tighter execution, and a clear path toward expanding The Graph's reach. It’s a much simpler model. To unlock this next phase of growth, several core priorities will define the Foundation’s new mandate:
Operational Continuity. Continuity for the protocol, the network, and the users who depend on them comes first. The Foundation is actively building internal technical capacity to run and maintain core infrastructure directly, rather than relying exclusively on funding external teams. This shift represents a decisive transition from coordinating third-parties to taking direct ownership of protocol operations.
Product Acceleration. Users will experience this operational shift most directly through a unified product interface. As The Graph expands beyond Subgraphs into modular data services, Subgraph Studio is evolving into a single platform to publish, discover, and consume data products, including Subgraphs, real-time streams, token analytics, and RPC endpoints. Crucially, the Foundation will prioritize an end-to-end decentralized Studio architecture, ensuring every query routes directly through the network and Indexers. Other user benefits will include integration of native Substreams, expanding consumption pathways from GraphQL and SQL to direct database delivery, and engineering next-generation indexing stacks to deliver high-performance data infrastructure under one cohesive, network-backed developer experience.
Enabling Data Service Providers. The Graph's expanding architecture - from Horizon and other initiatives - opens the door to a new class of network participant: teams that build and operate specialized data services on shared infrastructure. While several long-standing core developers are already migrating to this model, the Foundation is simultaneously leading the recruiting and onboarding of new ecosystem partners to accelerate this provider pipeline. This is also a deliberate change in how The Graph grows. Alongside serving developers directly, the Foundation is investing in a partner-led motion - targeting companies that build their products and businesses on top of the network and bring their own customers with them. Gateway Operators and data service providers can make The Graph their backend, reach markets the Foundation would never reach alone, and route that demand to the network's Indexers - teams that once ran parallel infrastructure become partners with a stake in the network's success. Every business that grows this way grows the network with it.
Chain Coverage and Integration. Capturing the value created across the ecosystem is an essential priority. Today, revenue generated from chain integrations is largely captured outside the protocol. However, protocol value capture must scale in tandem with network expansion. Consequently, the Foundation will take direct ownership of the - thereby aligning revenue capture directly with the protocol while prioritizing chains with proven developer demand and durable network value.
Vertical Priorities. The developer community remains the core of The Graph. As the industry matures, the Foundation will reinforce its commitment to developers while expanding the addressable user base and supported use cases. Moving forward, the Foundation will direct capital investment, product development, and ecosystem resources across three primary verticals:
- DeFi: While Subgraphs remain a core pillar of The Graph’s product suite, scaling Substreams adoption is a primary focus for capturing new market share. Significant enhancements in latency and expanded chain coverage make Substreams an essential data layer for high-throughput DeFi applications. Built directly on this foundation, a Token API product is intended to provide standardized, pre-indexed token metrics, while will deliver real-time streaming access to decentralized exchange liquidity. Expanding usage across these offerings routes sustained query demand into the upcoming Substreams data service.
- Institutional and Enterprise: Substreams will replace fragile RPC polling with high-throughput, parallelized data streaming delivered directly into proprietary enterprise systems. Deterministic and reproducible by design, Substreams is engineered so that identical inputs produce identical outputs - providing compliance, forensics, and custody teams with verifiable, reproducible data across chains for scalable risk management and . In parallel, the Foundation is positioning the network for the rise of institutional onchain privacy. As asset managers and banking institutions deploy confidential applications on public chains, confidentiality must be paired with verifiability. The Graph is uniquely suited to serve as the neutral, immutable query and verification layer that enables regulators, auditors, and counterparties to validate disclosures against ground-truth data, extending core protocol utility into enterprise infrastructure.
- AI and Agentic Applications: The Graph is positioned as the foundational data layer for onchain intelligence. The ecosystem is deploying an advanced suite of AI-native capabilities: (MCP) and Agent-to-Agent (A2A) interfaces for natural language querying, agentic SKILL modules to accelerate developer velocity, and primitives to facilitate autonomous, pay-per-query settlement for AI agents. Beyond data ingestion, the Foundation is expanding into agent state management. As autonomous agents act on behalf of users, they generate critical contextual memory, preferences, and interaction histories - assets currently siloed across proprietary centralized providers. Applying decentralized protocol principles, the Foundation is preparing the launch of its inaugural agentic product that will provide end-to-end encrypted, user-owned, and fully portable memory across heterogeneous models and agents. Served directly via The Graph Network without vendor lock-in, this architecture leverages existing network primitives to minimize operational overhead while scaling efficiently alongside adoption. Additional details about the Foundation's inaugural AI agentic product will be shared in upcoming releases.
Network Economics and Ecosystem Health. The Foundation is also taking a more hands-on role in the sustainability and performance of the Indexer ecosystem, reviewing issuance, payments, and incentives directly. Three efforts anchor that work:
- The moves indexing rewards from proof-of-presence toward proof-of-work. It ties reward eligibility to real quality of service, so Indexers earn for the value they actually deliver rather than for merely holding an allocation. Eliminating reward waste on idle allocations significantly optimizes the efficiency of the issuance pool, which helps balance broader shifts in protocol resource allocation.
- let consumers and Gateway Operators pay Indexers directly to serve specific subgraphs at an agreed level of service. This gives developers a way to increase confidence the data they need gets indexed, and gives Indexers a clear, verifiable pay-for-work relationship as the network scales.
- The GRT Liquid Staking Initiative turns staked GRT into stGRT, a liquid token built with on Enzyme tooling and managed by The Graph Foundation. Liquid Staking is intended to provide greater flexibility while allowing participants to maintain staking exposure, and makes participation far simpler for holders and institutions while deepening the stake that secures the network. More details will be forthcoming in the following weeks.
Community and Communication. With direct ownership of core development, the Foundation can finally communicate the way the community has asked for: a faster cadence of updates, clearer accountability for what ships and when, and more direct channels for dialogue - with this publication as an immediate step in that direction.
The Road Ahead
The road ahead will bring complex challenges. Geopolitical, macroeconomic, and regulatory forces continue to shape the industry in unpredictable ways. However, the Foundation enters this new phase with grounded optimism - driven not by hype, but by operational clarity and a defined sense of responsibility.
The Graph was founded on the principle that the world's blockchain data is a public good, and that open protocols offer superior reliability and permanence compared to centralized alternatives. That conviction is the through-line from The Graph's origins to this moment. The Graph represents some of the most vital infrastructure ever created in this industry, and The Graph Foundation is dedicated to demonstrating that through strong execution, supported by a vibrant ecosystem of committed chains, contributors, builders, and community members who share this vision. We believe The Graph’s best days are yet to come!
In the coming months, we'll follow up with more updates on what this next chapter means in practice - specific deliverables, timelines, and how the pieces described here fit together.
To learn more about how this evolution impacts protocol governance, resource allocation, and core development, review the FAQs below.
Frequently Asked Questions
How will the issuance allocation be used and governed?
Leveraging protocol issuance to fund core development is an established practice across the industry. These resources are committed strictly to building The Graph and to maintaining infrastructure continuity for users. The Foundation and its budget remain accountable to The Graph Council, which will retain oversight.
Is The Graph abandoning decentralization?
No. The protocol is strategically prioritizing decentralization where it delivers maximum impact and security: at the network, Indexer, and Gateway layers. A truly decentralized data market relies on a permissionless, distributed infrastructure of independent node operators, which remains core to The Graph. Concurrently, core development and resource allocation require focused operational leadership. Adopting an active operator posture enables the Foundation to provide strategic continuity and rapid technical execution without compromising the decentralized architecture of the network itself.
What happens to the former core development teams?
Former core development teams remain vital pillars of the ecosystem, and the Foundation desires to maintain deep, collaborative relationships with the contributors who established The Graph. Ongoing collaboration will continue across chain integrations, dedicated data services, and targeted product development. What is shifting is the funding framework and operational leadership. The new Foundation mandate replaces broad, open-ended operational grants with directed resource allocation that aligns ecosystem funding with the protocol's strategic priorities.
Is the Rewards Eligibility Oracle punitive? Will it push out small Indexers?
The Rewards Eligibility Oracle (REO) is aimed at directing rewards toward active service provision, not at punishing small Indexers. REO’s purpose is to support Indexers who actively contribute value to the protocol, rather than those staking without providing service. Size is not the criterion; contribution is. Rewards that would otherwise flow to Indexers delivering no value are reclaimed and can be redirected toward Indexers and other participants who do provide value, in both the near and long term.
One downstream effect is worth flagging for Delegators. Stake delegated to an Indexer that is no longer eligible for rewards will not earn indexing rewards either. Delegators in that position are encouraged to review where their stake sits and move it to an Indexer that actively participates in and contributes value to the network. Alternatively, The Graph will be announcing a new Liquid Staking program in the coming days to ease Delegator migration.
Does Foundation-run liquid staking centralize delegation?
This initiative does pool delegations and that is deliberate. Pooling lets the Foundation direct stake toward Indexers who deliver real value to the protocol. Historically, delegation has often followed the Indexers with the strongest marketing or the best placement on external staking and educational platforms, rather than those contributing the most value. The Foundation has the most complete view of where support is needed across the network, and this tool lets it back chain integrations, subgraph and data-service coverage, and both established and emerging contributors as the ecosystem grows.
How can the Foundation reinterpret the mandate?
Reinterpreting the mandate was not a unilateral move. The Foundation was encouraged to rethink the mandate by the Council and by other core teams in the ecosystem, who shared a dissatisfaction with how the original mandate was working. The previous mandate did not deliver the growth and success the protocol needs for its longevity. Reinterpreting how the Foundation participates has been more than a year of work, and we have concluded it is the best path to the protocol's long-term health and growth.
About The Graph
The Graph is a suite of blockchain data infrastructure products that extract, process, and deliver scalable blockchain data solutions across 60+ networks. The Graph enables application developers, data analysts, AI agents, and enterprise teams that need structured, real-time access to blockchain data. Products include Subgraphs, Firehose, Substreams, and Amp. As of early 2026, The Graph has served over 1.27 trillion queries to more than 75,000 projects, powered by a network of independent Indexers around the world.
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