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The more I learn about The Graph, the deeper I want to dive.
The team has carefully designed a self-correcting ecosystem, where people can earn money by making the right choices.
The network consists of 3 major roles, which all flow together to elegantly solve a problem of the users, while also providing a source of income to the participants.
What does The Graph ecosystem consist of?
Indexers (most active in network)
What: These are the people running Graph protocol nodes, which index an application's data on the blockchain (called a subgraph), and serve data for queries to a subgraph.
Why we need them: They power the network, but rely on other participants for more GRT and for direction on which subgraphs to index.
Economics: They make money through indexing and query rewards. They have to stake a minimum of 100k GRT (about $40,000 USD) to run an indexing node. Indexers have the potential to earn over a million GRT!
Delegators (least active)
What: These are people who carefully select indexers on the network by "delegating" their own GRT to be staked. Indexers with more delegators (more GRT staked) are more likely to earn higher rewards.
Why: Indexers need support from delegators to attract more traffic and make a higher profit on the network. This dependency requires them to be trustworthy, reliable, and generous to delegators.
Economics: Delegators can stake any amount of GRT to indexers, and earn a cut of the rewards and fees indexers earn. If they choose their indexers well, there is potential to earn a decent profit.
Curators (medium active)
What: Curators choose which subgraphs are worth indexing, and create a "signal" for indexers to act upon. They do research on which data will be the most useful to the users of the network.
Why: They curate the actual data on the network. They have financial incentive to choose the best possible applications to index.
Economics: Curators trade their GRT for "minting shares" in a subgraph, and earn a percentage of query profits from the subgraphs they are curating.