Timeline of The Graph.

Jannis Pohlmann, Brandon Ramirez, and Yaniv Tal – who previously worked together on several startups – dive into the Ethereum ecosystem in early 2017 because they notice that the limited tooling and lack of mature protocols in the space made it difficult to build dApps. The idea of making open data more easily accessible became an obsession of the founders and The Graph was born.

The Graph is introduced to the world.

We’re so excited to be announcing The Graph! 🗿✨ A decentralized query protocol for blockchains. The Graph lets you build dApps more easily on Ethereum and IPFS using GraphQL. Together we can build a new generation of the web free from monopolies. https://t.co/CRn36kuF2B

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 5, 2018

The core team of The Graph grows to ten people, the community around the protocol is growing rapidly.

The first Graph Day was held in January 2019. The event featured many speakers ranging from developers, CEOs/CTOs, and founders from Ethereum, NEAR, Livepeer, Compound, and Decentraland.

The Graph raises $2.5M seed round led by Multicoin.

Graph Explorer is launched, making it easy for anyone to discover the data being indexed on The Graph network and pull it into dApps.

The launch partners of the explorer were:

• Dharma
• Compound
• Uniswap
• ENS
• Origin
• Decentraland
• Livepeer

The subgraphs of the launch partners became publicly available on The Graph for third-party developers to access.

The Graph’s query language GraphQL is introduced. The query language is designed to power the new era of data interoperability.

In collaboration with CoinList, The Graph organized its very first online hackathon called Indexing the New Economy.

After introducing The Graph in July of 2018, the design of the first version of The Graph Network is published in detail.

• The Graph Network In Depth – Part 1
• The Graph Network In Depth – Part 2

Everest is The Graph’s first decentralized application and was launched in May 2020. It is a universal registry for crypto projects.

The Graph raises $5M from strategic supporters via SAFT. Crypto funds included Framework, ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Digital Currency Group, CoinIX, Tally Capital, with continued participation from Multicoin Capital and DTC Capital.

June 2020 saw a drastic increase of query volume, reaching up to 60M daily queries, allowing The Graph to process over 1 billion queries in one month.

The launch of the Mission Control testnet saw more than 200 Indexers participating worldwide, ensuring the first important step towards full decentralization of the network.

Today we kicked off Phase 1 of Mission Control - The Graph's incentivized testnet!

Over 200 Indexers have deployed Graph Nodes and are getting ready to index subgraphs & stake on the protocol.

We're thrilled to have such a decentralized community joining us on this mission 👨‍🚀 pic.twitter.com/h3QzaC9m1s

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) August 18, 2020

Graph Tokens (GRT) are work tokens that are locked-up by Indexers, Curators and Delegators in order to provide indexing and curating services to the network.

In October 2020, The Graph Foundation is publicly announced to foster an independent organizational structure that can support the vibrance and diversity of The Graph’s ecosystem. Eva Beylin serves as Director of The Graph Foundation. The initial team behind The Graph changes its name from Graph Protocol, Inc. to Edge & Node.

4% of the total token supply (400M tokens) was allocated to over 4,500 individuals from more than 90 countries who purchased GRT tokens worth $12M.

The Graph’s decentralized network is governed by The Graph Council. The council balances the interests of five core stakeholder groups: Indexers, active token holders, the initial team, users and technical domain experts.

After successfully launching its mainnet, The Graph explores providing support for additional Layer 1 blockchains, Bitcoin, Polkadot, NEAR, Cosmos, Solana, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Celo to support Web3 development.

Support for Polygon – Ethereum’s Internet of Blockchains (formerly Matic Network, a side chain for Ethereum) was added on The Graph’s hosted service.

After being live for three months, The Graph network was supported by 160 Indexers and 6,000 Delegators. Over 2.7B GRT (27% of all GRT) has been staked and delegated by Indexers and Delegators, equating to $4.3 Billion TVL.

The Graph Foundation allocates over $5M to grants and ecosystem support in its first wave of grants.

Audius, DODO, Enzyme, Omen, Livepeer, mStable, Opyn, PoolTogether, Reflexer, and UMA are the first 10 subgraphs migrating to The Graph Network mainnet.

In April 2021, The Graph reaches 20 billion total queries on the hosted service, resembling a 20x growth in comparison to 2020.

The Graph’s hosted service has been serving dapps for over two years & has come so far 📈

Today, we celebrate 20 billion monthly queries on the hosted service in April! 🚀 👩‍🚀#Web3 is on the rise! 🌐https://t.co/bTzYG7UiAY

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) May 6, 2021

StreamingFast joins the network as a core developer team. The $60M Core Dev Grant was the first grant of its kind, pioneering collaborative innovation.

The Graph Foundation is thrilled to award a $60M grant to @streamingfastio to join The Graph ecosystem as a Core Developer Team 👩‍🚀💥

StreamingFast is focusing on protocol R&D, indexing performance, & more! 🌐🚀
https://t.co/aQo6ycen3B

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 17, 2021

Subgraph Studio powers developers to permissionlessly deploy subgraphs to earn query fees and allows data consumers to query the network.

Curation goes live on the decentralized network, allowing anyone to permissionlessly deploy subgraphs and curate on subgraphs to earn query fees.

The Graph Foundation allocates over $2.8M to grants and ecosystem support in its second wave of grants.

The Graph gains a new core developer with Figment, one of the largest staking and node infrastructure providers.

We are excited to announce that we have officially joined The Graph ecosystem as one of the 3 core protocol development teams for @graphprotocol! 🤝🥳

This 80M GRT core dev grant is one the largest Web 3 grants ever. 📈

Check out what we will be doing 👇https://t.co/mLOU1MLGS6

— Figment (@Figment_io) July 29, 2021

The Graph Foundation allocates over $1.5M to grants and ecosystem support in its third wave of grants. In total, over $9 million to over 100 grantees was allocated in Waves 1, 2, and 3.

AI and cryptography software startup Semiotic AI joins The Graph Network as core developer team.

The Graph core developers continue to grow!@graphgrants is pleased to award a grant to @semioticai - an AI & cryptography startup that builds secure automated decision-making tools for decentralized markets 🧵🔽https://t.co/ZB7umz4ujV

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) December 9, 2021

The Guild is awarded a $48 million grant to contribute to subgraph and protocol R&D of the network.

Securing $50 million through a strategic GRT sale from The Graph Foundation’s treasury to onboard the brightest minds in web3. The fundraise was joined by Tiger Global, Reciprocal Ventures and Fintech Collective, alongside Fenbushi Capital and Blockwall Digital Assets Fund.

Worldwide adoption of web3 is underway with The Graph. The ecosystem is expanding & championing a decentralized web 🌐

$50 million was secured in a strategic GRT sale, & will be used to discover more developer teams & strengthen decentralization. https://t.co/ZdWMLmWyne

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) January 21, 2022

The Graph Foundation allocates over $1.72M to grants and ecosystem support in its fourth wave of grants.

In early 2022, The Graph is powered by 160 Indexers, 2500+ Curators, 8,600+ Delegators, and 282 subgraphs. Since the launch of the Subgraph Studio, over 282 subgraphs have transitioned from the Hosted Service to the decentralized network.

The Graph R&D Roadmap is a collaborative plan executed by core dev contributors, including Edge & Node, StreamingFast, Figment, The Guild, Semiotic AI, GraphOps, LimeChain, BlockScience, Prysm Group and other independent researchers.

The Graph AdvocatesDAO acts as the community governing body for overseeing membership and contributions of the Graph Advocates Program and community grants. The initial cohort consists of 20 members.

Introducing Graph AdvocatesDAO—the first DAO in The Graph ecosystem.

Graph AdvocatesDAO is a step towards decentralizing grants. The DAO now leads community grants & the Advocates Program 🧑‍🚀

Apply to join @GraphAdvocates & learn how you can join the DAO! https://t.co/ay4cKZTgNW

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) April 5, 2022

The Graph Foundation allocates over $1.25M to grants and ecosystem support in its fifth wave of grants.

The Graph hosts the the biggest Web3 conference in San Francisco.

Substreams are developed by core developer team StreamingFast and help to significantly increase indexing speed of subgraphs.

Subgraph indexing performance is getting significantly faster ⚡@streamingfastio, a core dev team contributing to The Graph, is implementing a way to make indexing performance 100x quicker: substreams.

Learn about the upcoming implementation here: https://t.co/8egYiuXCMN

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 3, 2022

The Graph announces the roadmap for sunsetting the Hosted Service.

The Graph ecosystem continues to by completeding a beta integration of its 35th chain and third non-EVM network: Cosmos Hub.

The first @cosmos ecosystem chain indexed by The Graph’s hosted service is @CosmosHub! 🌌

This beta integration, led by @Figment_io, marks the next step forward for web3’s multi-blockchain future.

Read more about the integration—live now: https://t.co/ZdIPXKne92 pic.twitter.com/dT9h5VXKez

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 7, 2022

The Graph Foundation awards Messari a $12.5mm grant to become the first Core Subgraph Developer of The Graph.

Messari has been awarded a $12.5M grant from The Graph Foundation to become a core subgraph developer! 👨‍🚀

This grant enables @MessariCrypto to lead subgraph standards development & continue building high-quality subgraphs for the web3 ecosystem. https://t.co/qCLTYbjkLt

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 2, 2022

GraphOps joineds The Graph ecosystem as a core developer and will support the protocol in key areas: Protocol Economics & Network Operations, Core Development of a Gossip Client and network, and Indexer Experience.

The Graph Foundation allocates over $1M to grants and ecosystem support in its sixth wave of grants.

The Graph’s Multi-Chain Incentivized Program launches to bootstrap Indexers to add support for new chains on the decentralized network, enabling migration of multi-chain subgraphs.

The Graph Network is growing to support new chains 🛸

Announcing the launch of MIPs, a new incentivized program to welcome the multi-chain future! 🧑‍🚀

The first chain after Ethereum to be indexed?

✨ @gnosischain ✨https://t.co/faPwdWSjUp

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) August 25, 2022

Support for Solana is added to The Graph with the help of Substreams.

The Graph is among Coinbase’s collaborators supporting the launch of the Base testnet to make public data easily accessible for developers with support for subgraphs on Base.

The Graph supports the testnet launch of @BuildOnBase🤝

Base is a new L2 incubated by @coinbase, with a vision to progressively decentralize.

The Graph is available for devs to use from Day 1 to access & organize Base data, & build fast, efficient dapps: https://t.co/J0fQYqueRU https://t.co/RV3mvvJaee pic.twitter.com/okKLD1CRJe

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) February 23, 2023

GraphOps launches Graphcast Network, POI Radio, and Graphcast SDK to give Indexers and developers a competitive edge by making it easier to share crucial data.

Two new features are introduced to improve indexing speed, reduce the amount of data that needs to be stored for a subgraph, and also speed up some queries: immutable entities and using Bytes as the id of entities

The Graph unlocks a new web3 use case by organizing off-chain data. This allows anyone to create a workflow where traditionally off-chain data is posted to IPFS and IPFS hashes are posted on-chain. This data can then be indexed by subgraphs.

The Graph’s quality of service (QoS) reaches new heights, making it superior to centralized alternatives.

The Graph plays a key role in fostering the adoption of account abstraction by helping to push the adoption of this important technical development to Web3.

Account Abstraction is expected to significantly improve web3's UX by overcoming key barriers to adoption 🚧

But it’s a bit of a buzzword 🧐

So what is it, how does it work, what are the benefits, & the real world use cases?

Here’s a quick read to get you up to speed ⬇️

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 29, 2023

By June 2023, over 1 trillion lifetime queries have been served by The Graph 🎉

It's official! Over 1 trillion lifetime queries have been served by The Graph 🎉

That's 100 billion queries... 10 times 🧮

That's 1 million queries... 1 million times 👀

Anyways... on to the next trillion. pic.twitter.com/eNbwZ7re3H

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) June 28, 2023

The Graph unveils substreams-powered subgraphs which are a new paradigm in data indexing. Substreams-powered subgraphs combine the power of Substreams with the queryability of subgraphs. With the release of Substreams-powered subgraphs, developers can now utilize Substreams to enhance syncing speeds in combination with subgraph functionalities for data querying.

Indexing performance just got boosted on The Graph Network ⚡

Introducing Substreams-powered subgraphs, a revolutionary advance in indexing performance.

With this release, The Graph is redefining what’s possible with web3 data.

Here’s a breakdown 🔽https://t.co/8Naeaxa7yc

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) July 20, 2023

The Graph is scaling with Arbitrum by releasing new L2 Transfer Tools designed to streamline the process of moving subgraphs, signal, stake, or delegation to Arbitrum One.

Pinax is building world-class data streaming solutions and joins The Graph as a core developer team.

The Graph introduces the Multi-Chain Expansion Process (CIP) for adding new chains to The Graph Network and to accelerate the network’s multi-chain expansion.

A new era of multi-chain expansion has arrived💫

Anyone can now propose adding support for new chains on The Graph Network via the Chain Integration Process. Enabling indexing rewards for future integrations will come from the community.

Here's how⬇️https://t.co/61rljaVLbh

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) August 30, 2023

The upgrade Indexer makes upgrading from the Hosted Service easier and is a fallback mechanism to ensure that every single subgraph that upgrades to the network can be served by the network.

The Graph ecosystem remains committed to its mission: Make open data available and accessible to all.

To help further this mission, core dev @edgeandnode will soon introduce the upgrade Indexer!

Here are the key details ⬇️

The upgrade Indexer is a solution for helping hosted… pic.twitter.com/nzeXIBqRhv

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) October 13, 2023

An updated plan for the sunrise of decentralized data is published, comprising of 3 phases: Sunray, Sunbeam, and
Sunrise.

🌅The Graph Network delivers best in class performance, low query costs, reliable uptime, redundancy and fast syncing speeds.

Now it’s time for everyone to take advantage of the benefits of upgrading to the network!

This announcement unveils an updated plan for the sunrise of… pic.twitter.com/8iHduepTqZ

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) October 31, 2023

With the New Era of The Graph, a roadmap for serving all the world’s data needs is introduced.

Core dev team GraphOps introduces Subgraph Radio – an innovative tool within The Graph Network aimed at boosting data and information exchange between Indexers and subgraph developers.

The Graph’s vision has expanded beyond subgraphs and GraphQL to serve more web3 data, more users and builders, and more use cases. Graph Horizon is a visionary transformation of The Graph into a more permissionless and fully modular protocol, designed to service a limitless array of data services and query languages, along with introducing several protocol enhancements and updates.

Graph Horizon is a proposal by @edgeandnode to transform The Graph into a more permissionless & efficient protocol in order to pioneer decentralized data’s role in the web3 tech stack ⚡

Enabling limitless data services, query languages, & more ⬇️https://t.co/Qfspll95Sm

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) February 15, 2024

With Ethereum’s EIP-4844, large data packets in transactions that are only stored for 18 days to boost scalability and reduces transaction costs. The Graph offers a long-term solution for the storage and retrieval of blobs.

Save the blobs!

The Graph is providing a long-term storage & retrieval solution for blobs following EIP-4844.

Learn more about how The Graph is storing blobs beyond 18 days here ⬇️https://t.co/dQwGA0qlN3

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) March 12, 2024

The Graph Network’s multichain expansion results in the network supporting a total of 40 widely used blockchains.

40+ leading blockchains and L2s are now supported on The Graph Network 🌅

That means that thanks to new tech enhancements such as the upgrade Indexer, devs across 4️⃣0️⃣+ chains can use subgraphs on the network more easily than ever, including @arbitrum, @avax, @Celo, @FantomFDN,… pic.twitter.com/TC69m1xsaG

— The Graph (@graphprotocol) March 14, 2024

Phase 1 of 3 for the Sunrise of Decentralized Data is complete. Developers can now seamlessly upgrade their hosted service subgraphs to The Graph Network. A free query plan providing 100,000 queries per month is added to the Subgraph Studio.

Hosted service users must upgrade their subgraphs to the decentralized network of The Graph by June 12.