The Graph Poised to Expand to Arbitrum in Layer 2 Win

More and more of Ethereum’s top protocols are looking to migrate onto Layer 2.

The community of The Graph, an indexing and query protocol for web3, is reviewing a June 2 proposal to expand the project on Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution.

Orders of Magnitude

If passed, the move will usher in a reduction in the costs incurred by The Graph’s indexers, curators, and delegators of roughly 26 times. A statement from Edge & Node, the team behind The Graph, estimates the savings could be tripled once Arbitrum’s forthcoming Nitro iteration is live.

“Deploying The Graph to Arbitrum will decrease gas costs of using the protocol by orders of magnitude…, making the decentralized network practical for a long tail of small and independent dapp developers for whom gas prices today are a challenge,” said Brandon Ramirez, co-founder and research lead at The Graph.

Source Data

The Graph allows developers to build and launch open APIs dubbed subgraphs that applications can query to source data from, with more than 52,000 subgraphs currently live. The protocol currently supports data indexing from 34 networks including Ethereum, Optimism, alternative Layer 1s, and the InterPlanetary File System. The Graph is used by top Web3 protocols including Uniswap, Synthetic, Decentraland, and Audius.

Edge & Node said the expansion onto L2 would be The Graph’s “first major update” since the protocol launched in December 2020. The team noted that The Graph would be among the first infrastructure projects to launch on Layer 2.

Misinformation

On the same day, The Graph also launched Geo, a web3-native browser powered by its technology.

The browser is designed to combat misinformation by enabling users to immutably validate the source of information online. Users can build and organize any public information, such as blog posts, ratings of establishments, job boards, and data.

The proposal was announced during Graph Day, an event held at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on June 2 to showcase the work of The Graph’s broader community. The event is host to presentations and discussions from developers and engineers representing top protocols including Uniswap, Goldfinch, Gitcoin, and Connext.
Graph Hack, a free three-day hackathon hosted at the same venue, will begin on June 3. Participants will compete for bounties by building dapps and learning best practices alongside builders who are experienced with The Graph.