The Graph: interview with the crypto project
During ETHCC in Paris, last month The Cryptonomist interviewed Eva Beylin, Director of The Graph Foundation. With Eva we talked about DeFi, dApps and the GRT crypto.
Will the indexing of decentralized protocols reach the same level of search engines like google and yahoo in the next few years?
Long-term decentralized indexing protocols will surpass search engines and current data
providers, as crypto protocols encompass all kinds of event, identity and transaction data that
current web companies don’t have. The nature of blockchains and protocols is they will behave
more like the infrastructure of the new internet than companies or servers, and thus all aspects
of our lives – our transactions, identity, art, updates in status will be accessible, that are part of a
massive knowledge graph.
What advantages can the connection between The Graph and new emerging artificial intelligence tools bring?
Currently core contributors of The Graph use AI to support simulation and research of our
protocol. The Graph also has the means to become the marketplace for accessing blockchain
data for AI tooling, for example you could imagine using Indexers to operate LLMs and selling
data to users.
How will the on-chain data market evolve in the coming years and what are the main challenges to face?
The on-chain data market will evolve to be much more user-data driven as more social, gaming
and interactive dapps proliferate. We’re already seeing the growth of on-chain ‘twitter’
replacements, so the nature of data will change along with these use cases. I anticipate we will
also see more desire for granular and complex data, such as block explorers, advanced DeFi
dashboards and more.
Lastly, I think the way on-chain data is consumed will also change the more that people are educated about crypto across other industries worldwide.
Can the graph and chainlink work together to improve the on-chain data industry?
Absolutely, we anticipate most dapp users are integrating both The Graph and Chainlink for their
data needs. We can definitely work more closely together to ensure web3 data surpasses the
qualities and needs of web2.
Will the GRT token take on other functions in the future besides paying commissions to use the platform?
GRT is the native work-utility token of The Graph Network. Its primary purpose is to coordinate
network participants (including data providers) and consumers who wish to access blockchain
data. Network participants collaborate to provide data to end users, and in return, they earn
GRT tokens. The Graph Network’s tokenomics encourage everyone within the network to index
and manage data efficiently.
Do you think the growth of the DeFi sector and that of the Metaverse could be a great opportunity for the platform?
The Graph is here to power web3 and significant portions of that are DeFi and the Metaverse,
so as the space grows, so will The Graph Network. The Graph Foundation is also driving
education initiatives targeting GraphQL, Rust and Javascript developers to join web3, often with
the subgraph being an easy entry point; to grow the number of dApps and entrepreneurs
building. We’re also excited about the social networking space, gaming and data-driven use cases.
