The Graph Protocol : Google of Blockchain
The graph is an Indexing protocol for querying blockchain data with GraphQL. It helps in structuring and organizing open data and makes it easily accessible for decentralized applications. Think of blockchain as a book and graph as the index page . Without the index , it will be difficult to find a particular useful chapter or a page that you are looking for in the book.
What google does for the web searches , the graph does the same for blockchain. For example , each time you search on Google, there are thousands of webpages with all kinds of information. Google organizes information about webpages in their Search index even before your search . The index is similar to a library which contains more information in all the world’s libraries put together. Within fraction of a second, Google’s Search algorithms sorts through plethora of webpages by leveraging their Search Index to find the relevant and useful results to satisfy what you’re looking for. Similarly , the graph protocol with their indexing and querying ability helps developers to sort through large datasets and provide useful information for their decentralized applications.
The graph protocol plays a vital role in blockchain technology as it provides readily available open API’s called subgraphs thereby reducing the workload of developers in building and maintaining customized programs/scripts for querying and indexing data from multiple blockchains which is time consuming.
Graph protocol being blockchain agnostic will be expanding support to different blockchains by providing indexing of huge data thereby helping developers query any useful data on any blockchain for their dapps at blazing-fast speeds.
Data types indexed by Graph protocol
Imagine in future when we have data in exbibytes ( exbibyte (EiB) is a unit used to measure data capacity), it will be essential to make super fast queries to parse through data such dapp data , private data , public datasets , company and personal files , videos, dapp websites etc.
The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. Different types data are stored and processed on open networks. The Graph makes querying this data fast, reliable, and secure.
Just a beginning
Currently as of today , there are over 3,400+ subgraphs, including Uniswap, Synthetix, Known Origin, Aragon ,AAVE and many more. In the past six months, usage has also grown 10x, averaging over 350 million queries per day.
Conclusion
The Web3 Journey has just begun and future of The Graph looks very bright. As per online sources , Google handles roughly 180–200 billion queries a month. The graph protocol currently is handling about 1 billion queries a month. (click here) Decentralized data usage for Dapps has started to kickoff and graph protocol will be the key to unlock these large datasets of blockchain world.