The New Decentralized The Graph Network
What are the new features and how to use it
Quite some time has passed since my last post about The Graph. If you don't know what it is and why it's useful, go and read the post. It's still relevant and explains in detail why it's needed and how to use it with the centralized hosted service.
But the tl;dr is: Events on a blockchain are a very efficient way to add data without having to store it in every node which is very expensive. This is done through the use of a bloom filter and a client is able to parse blocks and transactions to quickly find data he is looking for. But this still requires parsing through a lot of blocks, so one alternative is having a server index this data and store it in a database. Put GraphQL on top as a very convenient query language and you have The Graph, but as a centralized service.
In conclusion, The Graph allows querying data from a blockchain in a much more efficient way. This is extremely important when building a front-end and showing data about what happened in the blockchain without having to store the data directly in a smart contract.
Since then The Graph has started a new decentralized network and also added more features. The hosted service will end in Q1 of 2023, so now it's time to learn how the decentralized network works, how to use it and what new features there are for you as a developer.
The Transition Towards Decentralization
Originally The Graph only had a centralized hosted service, but that of course is not what we want in the long term. After all, what's the point of a Dapp if you fully rely on a centralized server for querying data. Actually it's still better than a fully centralized infrastructure, but we can still do better!
To get around the issue, The Graph has its own decentralized network with its own GRT ERC-20 token.
1. Protocol Roles
Consumers: Consumers are the ones sending queries to indexers and paying for this service. It could be end users directly, e.g. in the context of using a Dapp, or middleware services.
Indexers. Indexers are the ones actually providing the service of running servers, indexing events and storing them in a database. As reward they will receive fees from the consumers.
Curators: Curators will identify subgraphs that are worthy to be indexed and put up their own GRT for specific subgraphs. They will earn a share of the query fees based on a bonding curve. This might be developers of a subgraph that want to get their subgraph indexed.
Delegators. Delegators can stake GRT with indexers to earn a share of their query fees.
Consumers can freely choose which indexer to use based on things like up-time and price. And of course a Dapp could even use multiple indexers for the highest security.
2. GRT Token
The GRT token itself is used for staking:
- Indexers staking GRT serves the purpose of sybil resistance as well as allowing to slash them for bad behavior. Indexers are expected to stake a proportion of total staked GRT equal to the proportion of work they have performed for the network. This is not directly enforced, but rather comes from the design of collecting transaction fees and rebating those to participants as a function of their proportional stake and fees, inspired by 0x design.
- Delegators will loan their GRT to indexers and receive a share of the query fees in return. They cannot get their GRT slashed due to indexer misbehavior and there is a limit how much GRT each indexer can receive through delegation.
3. Bootstrapping New Subgraphs
To help in the bootstrapping for new subgraphs that don't have demand yet, GRT staking is inflationary and newly minted tokens are given to indexers which index very low query demand subgraphs. To make sure indexers are actually doing the work of indexing these low-demand subgraphs, there is an extra mechanism called Proof of Indexing (POI). A POI is signature over the subgraph state hash and is needed to receive indexer rewards. POIs are accepted optimistically, but could later be used to slash them. In the first version of the network, an arbitrator set through governance will decide these disputes.
Subgraph configurations (called manifest) are typically uploaded to IPFS. But what can we do when a manifest is simply not available? Then it would be impossible to verify these POIs. For this, there is a Subgraph Availability Oracle. It will look at several prominent IPFS endpoints and if a manifest is unavailable, the subgraph is not available for indexer rewards.
4. Payment Channels
Normal payment channels are a great way to scale payments. When you pay for every query like in The ›Graph, we obviously need something like this. In The Graph there will be an extra layer of security for payment channels: WAVE.
WAVE:
Work. Locked micropayment with a description of the work to be performed.
Attestation. Work + signed attestation which unlocks the micropayment optimistically.
Verification. Verify attestation out-of-channel which may lead to penalties.
Expiration. Locked micropayments can expire.
Query Verification
Now the question is how could you verify The Graph queries for correctness? Initially in The Graph, this is handled through an on-chain dispute resolution process, which is decided through arbitration. Fishermen will look for incorrect queries and submit the attestation to arbitration along with a bond.
In the future, rather than rely on arbitration for settling query disputes, the validity of queries could be guaranteed using cryptographic proofs using techniques such as a polynomial commitment or Merkle trees. Similarly even POIs could be automatically verified using a similar mechanism like Optimistic Rollups. Both combined would completely get rid of the need for the more centralized arbitration role currently in the network.
How to deploy to The Decentralized Graph
The Subgraph Studio is the first step towards The Decentralized Graph, but it still contains centralized components. In its current design, the payments are handled by The Graph team directly and you create an API key to query data. Later once verifiable queries are implemented, the users would pay directly.
If you have a subgraph already on the hosted service, take a look at the migration guide.
- Go to https://thegraph.com/studio/ and click create subgraph.
$ npm install -g @graphprotocol/graph-cli- Inside an existing project deploy a contract, e.g. $
npx hardhat run scripts/deploy.ts --network rinkeby $ graph init --studio <created-subgraph-name>- If the Etherscan contract is not verified, you may also pass the ABI file directly, e.g.
artifacts/contracts/Game.sol/Game.json - Save the correct schema.graphql and schema.ts.
$ graph auth --studio <my-subgraph-id>(see Subgraph Studio UI)$ graph codegen && graph build$ graph deploy --studio <my-subgraph-id>
Now you can click 'Publish' in the Subgraph Studio. To get Rinkeby testnet GRT, head over to The Graph Discord #roles, click 'T' and then go to #testnet-faucet and type in !grt <my-eth-address>. And you can immediately start curating the subgraph. Note that at the time of this writing actual queries on Rinkeby via the decentralized network are not yet supported, but they are for mainnet.
- You can access the testnet explorer at https://testnet.thegraph.com. Here you can also find a subgraph and test the curation for other subgraphs.
- Indexers (and curators + delegators) can be found via https://testnet.thegraph.com/explorer/participants/indexers and you can also test the delegation feature here.
- And the mainnet versions are https://thegraph.com/explorer and https://thegraph.com/participants/indexers.
New Features for Developers
- New AssemblyScript version: The Graph has updated the AssemblyScript used for writing the mappings. If you are used to older versions, you can follow the migration guide.
- Debug Forking: A new feature called debug forking allows to clone a deployed subgraph and change its mapping for a specific block. So if you deploy a new subgraph and it fails, now you can debug it locally from that block rather then re-syncing from scratch which takes a lot of time.
- New Blockchains: While not yet available on the decentralized network, The Graph has added indexing support for completely new blockchains, most notably Cosmos, NEAR and Arweave.
- Subgraph Mapping Unit-testing: A new unit-testing feature called matchstick allows testing subgraph mappings, see below for details.
Unit-testing Subgraph Mappings
To get started with unit-testing in an existing Subgraph:
- Install matchstick:
$ yarn add --dev matchstick-as
- Install Postgresql:
$ brew install postgresql(Mac) or$ sudo apt install postgresql(Linux)- or for Windows see docs
- Create testing file inside
/testsfolder. - Run the tests:
$ graph test
On the right you can see an example unit-test for our Bet mapping from our previous The Graph tutorial.
- You can first create mocked events using
newMockEvent.
2. Then modify the mocked event however you like.
3. Then call you handle event function from the mapping.
4. Assert the new state is as expected.
5. Clean the store afterwards.
import {
assert,
describe,
clearStore,
test,
newMockEvent,
} from "matchstick-as/assembly/index";
import { BetPlaced } from "../generated/Game/Game";
import { Address, BigInt, ethereum } from "@graphprotocol/graph-ts";
import { handleBetPlaced } from "../src/mapping";
function createBetPlacedEvent(
player: string,
value: BigInt,
hasWon: boolean
): BetPlaced {
const mockEvent = newMockEvent();
const BetPlacedEvent = new BetPlaced(
mockEvent.address,
mockEvent.logIndex,
mockEvent.transactionLogIndex,
mockEvent.logType,
mockEvent.block,
mockEvent.transaction,
mockEvent.parameters,
null
);
BetPlacedEvent.parameters = new Array();
const playerParam = new ethereum.EventParam(
"player",
ethereum.Value.fromAddress(Address.fromString(player))
);
const valueParam = new ethereum.EventParam(
"value",
ethereum.Value.fromUnsignedBigInt(value)
);
const hasWonParam = new ethereum.EventParam(
"hasWon",
ethereum.Value.fromBoolean(hasWon)
);
BetPlacedEvent.parameters.push(playerParam);
BetPlacedEvent.parameters.push(valueParam);
BetPlacedEvent.parameters.push(hasWonParam);
BetPlacedEvent.transaction.from = Address.fromString(player);
return BetPlacedEvent;
}
describe("handleBetPlaced()", () => {
test("Should create a new Bet entity", () => {
const player = "0x7c812f921954680af410d86ab3856f8d6565fc69";
const hasWon = true;
const mockedBetPlacedEvent = createBetPlacedEvent(
player,
BigInt.fromI32(100),
hasWon
);
handleBetPlaced(mockedBetPlacedEvent);
const betId =
mockedBetPlacedEvent.transaction.hash.toHex() +
"-" +
mockedBetPlacedEvent.logIndex.toString();
// fieldEquals(entityType: string, id: string, fieldName: string, expectedVal: string)
assert.fieldEquals("Bet", betId, "id", betId);
assert.fieldEquals("Bet", betId, "player", player);
assert.fieldEquals("Bet", betId, "playerHasWon", "true");
assert.fieldEquals(
"Bet",
betId,
"time",
mockedBetPlacedEvent.block.timestamp.toString()
);
clearStore();
});
});You can find the full example at https://github.com/soliditylabs/the-graph-studio-example.
What do you think of the plans of The Graph? Have you used the hosted service or even the decentralized network already?
Solidity Developer
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Stack Too Deep
Three words of horror
You just have to add one tiny change in your contracts. You think this will take you only a few seconds. And you are right, adding the code took you less than a minute. All happy about your coding speed you enter the compile command. With such a small change, you are confident your code is...
Integrating the new Chainlink contracts
How to use the new price feeder oracles
By now you've probably heard of Chainlink. Maybe you are even participating the current hackathon? In any case adding their new contracts to retrieve price feed data is surprisingly simple. But how does it work? Oracles and decentralization If you're confused about oracles, you're not alone. The...
TheGraph: Fixing the Web3 data querying
Why we need TheGraph and how to use it
Previously we looked at the big picture of Solidity and the create-eth-app which already mentioned TheGraph before. This time we will take a closer look at TheGraph which essentially became part of the standard stack for developing Dapps in the last year. But let's first see how we would do...
Adding Typescript to Truffle and Buidler
How to use TypeChain to utilize the powers of Typescript in your project
Unlike compiled languages, you pretty much have no safeguards when running JavaScript code. You'll only notice errors during runtime and you won't get autocompletion during coding. With Typescript you can get proper typechecking as long as the used library exports its types. Most Ethereum...
Integrating Balancer in your contracts
What is Balancer and how to use it
What is Balancer? Balancer is very similar to Uniswap. If you're not familiar with Uniswap or Balancer yet, they are fully decentralized protocols for automated liquidity provision on Ethereum. An easier-to-understand description would be that they are decentralized exchanges (DEX) relying on...
Navigating the pitfalls of securely interacting with ERC20 tokens
Figuring out how to securely interact might be harder than you think
You would think calling a few functions on an ERC-20 token is the simplest thing to do, right? Unfortunately I have some bad news, it's not. There are several things to consider and some errors are still pretty common. Let's start with the easy ones. Let's take a very common token: ... Now to...
Why you should automatically generate interests from user funds
How to integrate Aave and similar systems in your contracts
If you're writing contracts that use, hold or manage user funds, you might want to consider using those funds for generating free extra income. What's the catch? That's right, it's basically free money and leaving funds unused in a contract is wasting a lot of potential. The way these...
How to use Polygon (Matic) in your Dapp
Deploying and onboarding users to Polygon to avoid the high gas costs
Gas costs are exploding again, ETH2.0 is still too far away and people are now looking at layer 2 solutions. Here's a good overview of existing layer 2 projects: https://github.com/Awesome-Layer-2/awesome-layer-2. Today we will take a closer look at Polygon (previously known as Matic) as a...
Migrating from Truffle to Buidler
And why you should probably keep both.
Why Buidler? Proper debugging is a pain with Truffle. Events are way too difficult to use as logging and they don't even work for reverted transactions (when you would need them most). Buidler gives you a console.log for your contracts which is a game changer. And you'll also get stack traces...
Contract factories and clones
How to deploy contracts within contracts as easily and gas-efficient as possible
The factory design pattern is a pretty common pattern used in programming. The idea is simple, instead of creating objects directly, you have an object (the factory) that creates objects for you. In the case of Solidity, an object is a smart contract and so a factory will deploy new contracts for...
How to use IPFS in your Dapp?
Using the interplanetary file system in your frontend and contracts
You may have heard about IPFS before, the Interplanetary File System. The concept has existed for quite some time now, but with IPFS you'll get a more reliable data storage, thanks to their internal use of blockchain technology. Filecoin is a new system that is incentivizing storage for IPFS...
Downsizing contracts to fight the contract size limit
What can you do to prevent your contracts from getting too large?
Why is there a limit? On November 22, 2016 the Spurious Dragon hard-fork introduced EIP-170 which added a smart contract size limit of 24.576 kb. For you as a Solidity developer this means when you add more and more functionality to your contract, at some point you will reach the limit and when...
Using EXTCODEHASH to secure your systems
How to safely integrate anyone's smart contract
What is the EXTCODEHASH? The EVM opcode EXTCODEHASH was added on February 28, 2019 via EIP-1052. Not only does it help to reduce external function calls for compiled Solidity contracts, it also adds additional functionality. It gives you the hash of the code from an address. Since only contract...
Using the new Uniswap v2 in your contracts
What's new in Uniswap v2 and how to integrate Uniswap v2
Note : For Uniswap 3 check out the tutorial here. What is UniSwap? If you're not familiar with Uniswap yet, it's a fully decentralized protocol for automated liquidity provision on Ethereum. An easier-to-understand description would be that it's a decentralized exchange (DEX) relying on external...
Solidity and Truffle Continuous Integration Setup
How to setup Travis or Circle CI for Truffle testing along with useful plugins.
Continuous integration (CI) with Truffle is great for developing once you have a basic set of tests implemented. It allows you to run very long tests, ensure all tests pass before merging a pull request and to keep track of various statistics using additional tools. We will use the Truffle...
Upcoming Devcon 2021 and other events
The Ethereum Foundation just announced the next Devcon in 2021 in Colombia
Biggest virtual hackathon almost finished First of all, the current HackMoney event has come to an end and it has been a massive success. One can only imagine what kind of cool projects people have built in a 30 days hackathon. All final projects can be seen at:...
The Year of the 20: Creating an ERC20 in 2020
How to use the latest and best tools to create an ERC-20 token contract
You know what an ERC-20 is, you probably have created your own versions of it several times (if not, have a look at: ERC-20). But how would you start in 2020 using the latest tools? Let's create a new ERC-2020 token contract with some basic functionality which focuses on simplicity and latest...
How to get a Solidity developer job?
There are many ways to get a Solidity job and it might be easier than you think!
You have mastered the basics of Solidity, created your first few useful projects and now want to get your hands on some real-world projects. Getting a Solidity developer job might be easier than you think. There are generally plenty of options to choose from and often times not a lot of...
Design Pattern Solidity: Mock contracts for testing
Why you should make fun of your contracts
Mock objects are a common design pattern in object-oriented programming. Coming from the old French word 'mocquer' with the meaning of 'making fun of', it evolved to 'imitating something real' which is actually what we are doing in programming. Please only make fun of your smart contracts if you...
Kickstart your Dapp frontend development with create-eth-app
An overview on how to use the app and its features
Last time we looked at the big picture of Solidity and already mentioned the create-eth-app. Now you will find out how to use it, what features are integrated and additional ideas on how to expand on it. Started by Paul Razvan Berg, the founder of sablier, this app will kickstart your frontend...
The big picture of Solidity and Blockchain development in 2020
Overview of the most important technologies, services and tools that you need to know
Now, I do not know about you, but I remember when I first started with Solidity development being very confused by all the tools and services and how they work in connection with one another. If you are like me, this overview will help you understand the big picture of Solidity development. As I...
Design Pattern Solidity: Free up unused storage
Why you should clean up after yourself
You may or may not be used to a garbage collectors in your previous programming language. There is no such thing in Solidity and even if there was a similar concept, you would still be better off managing state data yourself. Only you as a programmer can know exactly which data will not be used...
How to setup Solidity Developer Environment on Windows
What you need to know about developing on Windows
Using Windows for development, especially for Solidity development, can be a pain sometimes, but it does not have to be. Once you have configured your environment properly, it can actually be extremely efficient and Windows is a very, very stable OS, so your overall experience can be amazing. The...
Avoiding out of gas for Truffle tests
How you do not have to worry about gas in tests anymore
You have probably seen this error message a lot of times: Error: VM Exception while processing transaction: out of gas Disclaimer : Unfortunately, this does not always actually mean what it is saying when using Truffle , especially for older versions. It can occur for various reasons and might be...
Design Pattern Solidity: Stages
How you can design stages in your contract
Closely related to the concept of finite-state machines, this pattern will help you restrict functions in your contract. You will find a lot of situations where it might be useful. Any time a contract should allow function calls only in certain stages. Let's look at an example: contract Pool {...
Web3 1.2.5: Revert reason strings
How to use the new feature
A new Web3 version was just released and it comes with a new feature that should make your life easier. With the latest version 1.2.5, you can now see the the revert reason if you use the new handleRevert option. You can activate it easily by using web3.eth.handleRevert = true . Now when you use...
Gaining back control of the internet
How Ocelot is decentralizing cloud computing
I recently came across an ambitious company that will completely redefine the way we are using the internet. Or rather, the way we are using its underlying infrastructure which ultimately is the internet. While looking at their offering, I also learned how to get anonymous cloud machines, you...
Devcon 5 - Review
Impressions from the conference
I had a lot to catch up on after Devcon. Also things didn't go quite as planned, so please excuse my delayed review! This year's Devcon was certainly stormy with a big typhoon warning already on day 1. Luckily (for us, not the people in Tokyo), it went right past Osaka. Nevertheless, a lot of...
Devcon 5 - Information, Events, Links, Telegram
What you need to know
Devcon 5 is coming up soon and there are already lots of events available, information about Osaka and more. Here is a short overview: Events Events Calendar Events Google Docs Events Kickback Most events are in all three, but if you really want to see all, you will have to look at all three...
Design Pattern Solidity: Off-chain beats on-chain
Why you should do as much as possible off-chain
As you might have realized, Ethereum transactions are anything but cheap. In particular, if you are computing complex things or storing a lot of data. That means sometimes we cannot put all logic inside Solidity. Instead, we can utilize off-chain computations to help us. A very simple example...
Design Pattern Solidity: Initialize Contract after Deployment
How to use the Initializable pattern
There are a few reasons why you might want to initialize a contract after deployment and not directly by passing constructor arguments. But first let's look at an example: contract MyCrowdsale { uint256 rate; function initialize(uint256 _rate) public { rate = _rate; } } What's the advantage over...
Consensys Blockchain Jobs Report
What the current blockchain job market looks like
Consensys published their blockchain jobs report which you can checkout in their Blockchain Developer Job Kit. The most interesting aspects are Blockchain developer jobs have been growing at a rate of 33x of the previous year according to LinkedIns jobs report Typical salary is about...
Provable — Randomness Oracle
How the Oraclize random number generator works
One particularly interesting approach by Provable is the usage of a hardware security device, namely the Ledger Nano S. It uses a trusted execution environment to generate random numbers and provides a Provable Connector Contract as interface. How to use the Provable Randomness Oracle? Use the...
Solidity Design Patterns: Multiply before Dividing
Why the correct order matters!
There has been a lot of progress since the beginning of Ethereum about best practices in Solidity. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that most of the knowledge is within the circle of experienced people and there aren’t that many online resources about it. That is why I would like to start this...
Devcon 5 Applications closing in one week
Devcon 5 Applications closing
Watch out for the Devcon 5 applications. You only have one week left to apply either as Buidler Student Scholarship Press Devcon is by far the biggest and most impressive Ethereum conference in the world. And it's full of developers! I am especially excited about the cool location this year in...
Randomness and the Blockchain
How to achieve secure randomness for Solidity smart contracts?
Update 2023 : Ethereum transitioned to Proof of Stake! If you are interested in the randomness there, you can now use the updated info over at https://soliditydeveloper.com/prevrandao. When we talk about randomness and blockchain, these are really two problems: How to generate randomness in smart...