The Graph Sells Out $12M in GRT Public Sale as it Marches Toward Mainnet Launch

The Graph’s GRT Sale got snatched up by over 4,500 individuals globally.


Today, The Graph Foundation announced a successful public sale of GRT, The Graph’s native token, selling $12M to the community. During the sale, 4% of the total token supply (400M tokens) was allocated to over 4,500 individuals outside the U.S. who successfully passed KYC compliance, from more than 90 countries. These O.G.’s (Original Graphers) will be the initial GRT community members at The Graph’s mainnet launch, expected in 30-60 days.

Wide distribution of the GRT token was a primary goal of the sale. The GRT sale accomplished this goal with significant representation from Russia, Vietnam, China, India and Great Britain, with participation from 99 countries in total.

Individuals that hold GRT will be able to participate in The Graph Network as Indexers, Curators or Delegators by providing their services to decentralized applications. Read more about these roles in The Graph Network In-Depth. With over 200 Indexers in the testnet, more than 2,000 Curators registered for the Curator Program and now more than 4,500 GRT holders across the world, The Graph is one of the most decentralized and global protocols in Web3.

Sale Methodology

As outlined in The Graph’s Sale and Distribution, the GRT Sale was constructed with three phases to optimize for distribution to contributing community members and to mitigate the risk of a gas war.

Each registrant had an individual purchase cap allocated to them so the sale could accommodate as many participants as possible and eliminate the possibility of large purchasers or bots from buying up the sale.

Sale participants were required to successfully complete KYC and a registration form where they answered questions about their understanding of The Graph, interest in DeFi and Web3, and willingness to contribute to the network. Based on answers to these questions and past contributions, phases and individual caps were assigned between $1,000 and $5,000 USD equivalent.

There is no doubt many talented community members did not get a chance to participate in Phase 1 and the process was not 100% perfect, but using this system it was guaranteed that at least 3,000 individuals from all walks of life bound only by their understanding of The Graph and their alignment to the decentralization mission would be able to participate.

  • Phase 1 - Selected participants, up to 24 hours to purchase (Thurs, Oct 22 at 9am PDT)
  • Phase 2 - All successfully registered participants, first come first served (Fri, Oct 23 at 9am PDT)
  • Phase 3 - First come first served, if tokens remaining (Sat, Oct 24 at 9am PDT)

14,000 individuals successfully registered for the sale. In Phase 1, about 300M GRT tokens were allocated and registrants were given 24 hours to purchase up to their individual caps. Once Phase 1 completed, all other registrants could participate in Phase 2 where about 100M GRT tokens were reserved for purchase. Due to significant demand, those tokens sold out in about 11 minutes, leaving no tokens remaining for Phase 3 and the sale completed early.

First Sale of its Kind

The Graph’s sale was the first of its kind. The Graph Foundation decided to host the sale entirely on Ethereum and The Graph to demonstrate the great power of building on Web3. The GRT Sale dApp was built using a subgraph and integrated with Metamask and Wallet Connect. The dApp functioned flawlessly with no hiccups or downtime despite the violent spikes in traffic, a testament to the power of Web3. Overall, the foundation is pleased that the sale went smoothly and that the community enjoyed the novel experience.


That was the most streamlined and professional token sale experience I’ve ever had during my 8 years in crypto. Hats off to you, Tegan, and the whole Graph team - well done and congratulations!
Ian WorrallFounder of TokenWeb.io

All sale participants purchased preGRT a pre-functional, non-transferable token. At the time of network launch, a genesis distribution of GRT will take place with a 1:1 mapping of preGRT to GRT. If you participated in the sale, you can see the preGRT tokens in your Metamask wallet by adding the crowdsale address. Make sure to add 18 decimals!

The Road to Mainnet

The next major milestone on The Graph’s roadmap is the mainnet launch of The Graph Network, which is estimated to be in 30-60 days. This will be Wave 1 of the mainnet launch, whereby the network smart contracts will be deployed and there will be genesis distribution of GRT. At this time, all sale participant addresses will receive their equivalent GRT.

Once the network launches, Indexers and Delegators will be able to provide indexing and delegation services through the Graph Node CLI and members of the Curator Program and Mission Control Testnet will be able to stake through the Graph Explorer dApp in private beta. Subgraph migration from the hosted service to the decentralized network will also begin during Wave 1.

In Wave 2, the network will be autonomous and any community members and organizations can build on the protocol and develop apps for the ecosystem. At this time, Edge & Node will release a Graph Explorer and Gateway dApp that can supplement other applications to give users access to the protocol.

All sale participants will receive emails from The Graph Foundation with more information as the network approaches launch.

Get Involved with The Graph Network

To learn more about The Graph, check out the social channels to stay up to date with the community and technical progress:

If you’re an application developer, make sure to check out the Graph Explorer to see which subgraphs are live and ready to be integrated! Or read the docs to learn how to deploy a new subgraph.

If you were not able to participate in the GRT Sale, there are other ways to get involved and contribute to The Graph Network in various roles. Join the Curator Program to learn about curation on the network to accurately identify valuable subgraphs for Indexers. You can also look out for our upcoming bug bounties and Ambassador’s Program.

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 40+ 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.


Category
Graph Protocol
Author
The Graph Foundation
Published
October 28, 2020

The Graph Foundation

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