The Graph — Public Decentralized Infrastructure for the Metaverse
Rawrshak & The Graph
Intro
2021 saw the idea of the metaverse really cement itself in the minds of the general public. As the world’s unprecedented shutdown became prolonged, we started realizing that work and life as we know it will, to some degree, remain online for the foreseeable future. As older generations sour at the thought, millennials and the younger generations realize that new and powerful opportunities are available if they embrace the digitization of their lives.
When Facebook renamed itself to Meta, overnight the metaverse was suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Reactions varied widely from abject horror to slight skepticism to absolute excitement.
For us who were already working on the blockchain metaverse, it was both incredibly validating and absolutely nerve-racking. On one hand, it affirms that what we’ve been working on has incredible value and solidifies our future as an industry. On the other hand, a not-so-reputable big tech company with a history of squeezing the life out of its competition is attempting to be the face of the industry.
In order to combat the possibility of a metaverse built on top of a few big tech islands, we decided to build Rawrshak on top of decentralized infrastructure. A major component of our ecosystem is The Graph.
The Graph
The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains such as Ethereum, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, and Ethereum L2s such as XDAI, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism. It allows us to create a backend that makes it easy to request data from a blockchain that is difficult to query directly.
The Graph allows developers to create subgraphs which define the smart contracts of interest and indexes information in logical and descriptive ways. Because these subgraphs are open APIs, it makes it easy for any developer to query these public endpoints for data.
Prior to The Graph, developers would have to manage their own central servers and databases that index and query the blockchain for data. This has high upkeep in terms of engineering and maintenance costs. It also creates a central point of failure as it establishes a dependency on cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. These servers would also be private and only accessible to their owners.
Rawrshak <> The Graph
Rawrshak made the decision to aim for complete decentralization for our entire platform ~ from decentralized governance to our underlying technology. We made it a point to make sure that every part of our stack is either open sourced or built on decentralized infrastructure.
Using The Graph as our data indexer backend produces several benefits for the Rawrshak ecosystem.
No central point of failure
As previously mentioned, The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains. With its huge community of indexers, delegators, and curators, we can be confident in the reliability, security, and correctness of the data that is served.
Public Subgraphs and Customizable Subgraphs
Subgraphs enable the developers to index information and create data relationship structures that are easy to query. With Rawrshak’s public subgraphs, developers are free to integrate this data into their own websites to display their information in whatever way they choose.
Developers can also deploy their own subgraphs in order to create a schema that suits their needs. They can easily customize how data is indexed from their own Rawrshak smart contracts.
Easy Game Engine Integration
With the public subgraphs deployed, game developers can access and query the indexed data through the GraphQL API. With Rawrshak’s public game engine SDKs, we provide an easy way to get the data developers need. We also made the GraphQL library extensible so developers can create custom queries to our Rawrshak subgraphs or their own custom subgraph.
As part of The Graph Foundation’s Wave 3 Grant Program, Rawrshak is making our subgraphs publicly available in order to create an open and developer-friendly ecosystem. Developers are free to create their own dashboards regarding their assets, as well as their store. Rawrshak’s public subgraphs make it easy to query and display a game’s assets publicly on any developer’s website. In the future, we will help build tools to make integrating with Rawrshak much easier.
Developers can also create in-game integrations with the Rawrshak Marketplace, so gamers can have access to a public marketplace inside their favorite game. The subgraphs are built to contain relevant information that a developer may want to expose to players.
The subgraphs are open-sourced and accessible here. Developers can contribute and help develop the subgraphs for the ecosystem. They can request more data, or simply submit subgraph changes that would benefit all developers on the platform.
Decentralized Metaverse Future
Integrating with The Graph is only one of the ways Rawrshak is helping build a decentralized metaverse. We at Rawrshak believe that the metaverse has to be more sustainable and equitable than the existing systems. To do that, we must build the foundation of the metaverse in a way that gives these projects a chance to succeed.
It is still incredibly early in the implementation of the metaverse and if we, the builders, don’t design these systems with a progressive approach, then the metaverse is doomed to be a clone of the existing Web 2.0 world where a few big players have majority of the power.
As future world architects and reality artisans, help us build towards an equitable, sustainable, and decentralized ecosystem of gaming worlds.
Alpha Release Announcement
As of today, we’re announcing an alpha release of the Rawrshak platform on Optimistic Kovan Testnet! With this release, gamers, game developers and content creators can start interacting with our platform, releasing test assets, and playing with our Unity game engine SDK.
Please check out more information here.
About Rawrshak
Rawrshak is a gaming-focused NFT platform that empowers creators to deploy cross-game interoperable assets. The platform provides a decentralized end-to-end solution for traditional game developers who want to easily plug into a metaverse.
For the latest information on Rawrshak, please join our Discord and follow us on Twitter.
