Overview
How To Verify Subgraphs and Estimate Query Traffic.
The success of Curators largely depends on their skill to accurately verify subgraphs and to successfully predict their potential to generate query traffic. In the following, we will have a close look at helpful tactics to verify subgraphs and to estimate query traffic.
Step One: Verify Subgraphs with the Development Team.
Go in the project’s discord, telegram channels or message their project twitter account and politely ask the developers if the subgraph that was just posted on The Graph’s mainnet was initiated by
their team. If the devs confirm you can jump straight to step three.
Key point, be very clear about what you say. “Did your team publish ____ subgraph on The Graph’s mainnet?” is not specific enough. A screenshot of the name and icon may cause a developer to think you’re referring to a subgraph from the testnet, be overly specific and send links and deployment ID’s
when referring to the subgraphs.
Step Two: Verify While Waiting on the Development Team.
While waiting for a response from the developer team, inspect the address that
deployed the subgraph by clicking on the address referred to below.
Check and see if there are any other subgraphs this person has deployed. Generally speaking a subgraph is either published by the developer of aproject or the subgraph serves a function for multiple DApps (suchasEIP721). If it’s a function based subgraph, has the subgraph dev made others that were utilized? This would be a good sign of the developers legitimacy. However, if it’s a project based subgraph, you shoul dnot see one DApp publishing another DApp’s subgraph(this would be a red flag). Most often they will only have one. Check and see if the subgraph has a GitHub linked to it and does the GitHub have an e-mail address you can reach out to? If so, reach out and verify they are in fact behind the subgraph! How long have they been in the community? Many projects are entering for the first time to deploy their subgraph. For a function based subgraph, you would require them to have experience in this network:
Click on their address and view their transaction history. Do they have a transaction history or was this wallet just started? If the wallet was just started, this could be a possible red flag. Do they have an ENS showing a registered name – if so when was it registered? If recently, this could be a possible red flag. If it matches the project name open MM explorer and go to the site to confirm it shows the project site.
Look at what other tokens this address holds. Are they scammy? If so this would be a red flag.
If you’ve completed all the above steps, and haven’t been able to verify a subgraph, you should refrain from signaling that subgraph for now. We suggest waiting until you hear back from social media channels.
Step Three: Estimating Query Traffic.
For existing graphs we recommend comparing the 30 day Query Fees to the amount of total signal to assess the monetary value of curating a subgraph. This is a good estimate for what one can expect to receive in their share’s value increase purely by holding their position (similar to a dividend reinvestment program or DRIP).
Why is This Important?
Let us say we have 2 subgrahs – A and B. Subgraph A has a total signal of 200,000 and produces 5,000 GRT
in query fees every 30 days, and subgraph B has a total signal of 200,000 and produces 10,000 in query fees
every 30 days. The curators in subgraph B will have their shares appreciate in value faster than subgraph A.
Thus subgraph B is actually more valuable but the curator market ha snot yet reacted to this. For newer subgraphs we don’t have access to historical query traffic to evaluate this. Obtaining an early position on the bond curve is important, this is where you speculate what the monetary value of curating the subgraph will be – and ultimately if the total signal should go up or down.
Important Questions to Ask When Estimating Query Traffic.
What is their website traffic like?
Check their alexa ranking. For example, aproject witha rankingof 500,000 isnewer and we shouldn’t over signal them, aproject witha rankingof 50,000 hashightraffic andhighengagement.
If project based, what industry is the DAppin?
DeFi is one of thehighestprocessors of The Graph’s API’s. Lookingat the schema.graphql file cangive you
anidea of what informationthey’re accessing. For example theETH2 subgraphispullinginformationrelated
to how many deposits have been made into theETH2 contract. While this is very valid data to gather from the blockchain, this is not something that is run hundreds of thousands or millions of times per day. You should also look at some more elementary data pertaining to the community around the specific DApp you are looking at. Metrics you can use to analyze community strength include but aren’t limited to Twitter followers and Discord members. Look through Twitter and Discord and see how active not only the team is, but the community around the project and analyze how The Graph Protocol has/will benefit this DApp.
If function based, what is the user base of the subgraph?
If it is anew function based subgraph, ask yourself how the subgraphp rovides utility and if there will be DApps that utilize it. If already established on the testnet, ask yoursel fhow many DApps were utilizing this specific subgraphonthe testnet,how muchquery traffic were theygenerating, and why DAppsutilize it.
