The Graph’s New Era of Scalability: Arbitrum and L2 Transfer Tools
Prefer to hear this blog aloud? Listen to the contents of this blog via The Graph Podcast.
As the adoption of blockchain technology grows, it revolutionizes existing industries while spurring entirely new use cases like NFTs and decentralized governance. But much of this growth comes with a cost – the recent explosion of activity on layer one (L1) blockchains has resulted in tradeoffs such as prohibitively high gas fees. In order for web3 to reach its full potential, and for The Graph to continue playing a role in onboarding the novel internet’s next billion participants,scalability without prohibitive costs is non-negotiable.
Greater protocol scalability. Exponential gas savings.
Part of The Graph’s growth journey has manifested in the community’s decision to scale with Arbitrum, a significant move aimed at broadening The Graph's accessibility within the web3 ecosystem. The decision was not without its challenges; the rapid expansion of The Graph’s decentralized network had been bottle-necked under the weight of Ethereum's escalating gas fees, creating a barrier to entry for some new participants, or complicating frequency of transactions for existing participants. But some challenges are simply opportunities in disguise.
Today, The Graph Foundation is thrilled to announce a massive milestone in scaling the protocol. The Graph’s core dev teams have entered Phase 3 of scaling with Arbitrum by releasing new L2 Transfer Tools. These tools are designed to streamline the process of moving subgraphs, signal, stake, or delegation to Arbitrum One, making it efficient and easy for all participants in The Graph ecosystem to enjoy participating on The Graph on L2.
L2 Transfer Tools make it easy to use The Graph on Arbitrum
What are L2 Transfer Tools? Think of them as a software wizard for making it simple and fast for network participants to transfer participation from The Graph Network on L1 over to L2. These transfer tools assist with transferring:
Delegation
Easily move delegated GRT to Arbitrum One. See if your favorite Indexer(s) started transferring their stake to L2. Then, you can use L2 Transfer Tools to transfer your delegated GRT to begin taking advantage of the increasing indexing rewards on Arbitrum!
One wonderful benefit of The Graph on L2 is the increased flexibility around delegation. It’s easier for Delegators to delegate GRT of any amount, thanks to the incredible gas savings. Delegators can also help secure the network in new ways with the option to delegate to a broader pool of Indexers. Additionally, it’s now easier to change (add or remove) delegation amounts on a more frequent basis, without the pressure of expensive and wildly fluctuating gas costs.
Subgraph Transfer
L2 Transfer Tools make it easy to move subgraphs published to the network on Ethereum over to Arbitrum One. Join the growing list of subgraph developers publishing subgraphs to the network for significantly lower gas fees! L2 savings also make it easier for devs to more frequently update their subgraph versions.
Curation Signal
Curating subgraphs on Arbitrum One becomes significantly more advantageous due to its flattened bonding curve. This allows Curators to signal or unsignal on subgraphs at any given time, at a consistent cost. This empowers subgraph developers to attract a larger number of Indexers to their subgraphs as they scale, without the requirement to purchase increasingly costly curation signal.
Indexer Stake
Operating an Indexer on The Graph Network? Easily and securely move your stake over to Arbitrum One to begin experiencing the benefits of lower cost gas. Open and close allocations on subgraphs with a greater degree of flexibility, claim query fees of various sizes without gas eating at profits, and add or decrease self-stake more flexibly.
Scaling The Graph with Arbitrum represents a profound step towards making decentralized web3 infrastructure significantly easier, cheaper, and more intuitive to use for a broader pool of participants and users. As The Graph community celebrates this landmark, we are more dedicated than ever to the mission of organizing the world's blockchain data in a decentralized, accessible and cost-effective way.
Seamlessly scaling network participation
In order for decentralized protocols to succeed, they need to be able to scale. As one of the first protocols to successfully find protocol-market fit on L1 and transition to L2, The Graph is demonstrating how scaling in a decentralized context is achievable.
Inspiration for this innovative leap comes from peers in the web3 sphere. Drawing in part upon the successful L2 journey of Livepeer, the development of L2 Transfer Tools has been undertaken with the objective of simplifying the move to Arbitrum for all network participants.
Before, manually moving digital assets to Arbitrum could have been a challenge for network participants. However, the introduction of L2 Transfer Tools has eliminated this complexity, making it straightforward for existing participants to make the move, and begin using The Graph with considerably lower gas fees.
Scaling with Arbitrum paves the way for The Graph to scale its network capabilities and serve blockchain data to every dapp in the web3 ecosystem. As The Graph advances in this direction, it is not just expanding its own protocol; it is contributing to the worldwide momentum towards a more open, interoperable, and accessible internet.
What’s next for The Graph Network
The Graph scaling on Arbitrum establishes a foundation that enables network participants to power blockchain data for the entire web3 ecosystem more easily. Scaling on L2 makes it easier for developers and data consumers alike to embrace the sunrise of decentralized data with lower costs of participating on the network. Even more exciting changes are being developed, includingindexing rewards on Arbitrum increasing, enabling even more chains on The Graph Network, unlocking blazing fast new data sources with substreams, and so much more!
This trailblazing work, a true testament to the innovation and collaboration that underpin the spirit of web3, doesn't stop at The Graph. In a bid to share the knowledge gained and to accelerate the growth of web3, the code related to the integration with Arbitrum has been made open source. This move is intended to illuminate the path for the next generation of web3 protocols, helping them to navigate their own success stories in this exciting new landscape.
Learn how you can use the L2 Transfer Tools to move from Ethereum mainnet to Arbitrum One and begin taking advantage of the lower gas fees.
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.
