Voyage to V2: The Graph

Very early on, we identified the need for an additional data layer between the blockchain and our web application. What does that mean? It’s relatively straightforward to query a blockchain for “state” information e.g. a user’s balance on a particular Geyser. You can just look at our smart contract at a given time and voila. However, doing “aggregation” queries like getting the total balance a user has staked across the entire GYSR platform is difficult. The Graph offers us a great solution to this challenge.

For people who are unfamiliar, The Graph is an indexing protocol designed for aggregating and storing blockchain data in meaningful ways. It is easily extensible to our own application needs. It’s also open and decentralized, which aligns with the spirit of GYSR. Earlier this year we built and launched the GYSR subgraph which indexes information on our platform. This includes information about tokens (price, name, type, etc.), users (positions, activity, etc.), Geysers (configuration, APR, TVL, etc.), and so on.

While this subgraph has already been used heavily in a live production setting for our alpha “discover” page, it will be an even more essential building block for our v2 webapp, which we will explore in more depth in an upcoming post. We also expect the subgraph to be used increasingly by developers of projects that deploy Geysers themselves, or by informational tracking websites. You can expect to see more formal technical documentation of the GYSR subgraph appear on our website soon. Finally, as a tease regarding our future goals, the Graph is also portable and allows us the option to easily deploy on other chains like Polygon and xDai.

-the GYSR Team