The Graph Foundation is fundamentally restructuring how it operates, moving from a hands-off funding model to directly developing, maintaining and scaling the blockchain data infrastructure protocol that powers over 75,000 projects. This shift represents a significant organizational pivot for the foundation, which has historically coordinated independent development teams since The Graph's launch in 2018. The change reflects growing pressure in the Web3 infrastructure space, where speed and execution have become competitive advantages.

Why Is The Graph Foundation Changing Its Operating Model?

For years, The Graph Foundation operated as a coordinator and funder, supporting independent teams through long-term grants to build out the protocol's core features. This decentralized approach worked well in The Graph's early days, when establishing open-access blockchain data standards and attracting contributors were the primary goals. However, the foundation now argues that relying on external roadmaps has created coordination bottlenecks and slowed execution in an increasingly competitive market.

The blockchain data infrastructure space has become crowded, with multiple providers competing to offer faster, cheaper and more specialized services. To keep pace, The Graph Foundation decided it needed tighter control over product development and strategic direction. The foundation plans to redirect 20% of protocol issuance, the new tokens created by the network, toward funding these expanded internal responsibilities, subject to oversight from The Graph Council.

What New Products and Services Is The Graph Planning?

Under its expanded mandate, The Graph Foundation intends to broaden its focus beyond subgraphs, which are tools developers use to organize and query blockchain data. The foundation is building a unified interface called Subgraph Studio where developers can publish, discover and consume multiple types of blockchain data products. This expanded ecosystem will include real-time data streaming, token analytics, institutional infrastructure and artificial intelligence applications.

The foundation has identified three key verticals for growth. Within decentralized finance (DeFi), a category of financial applications built on public blockchains, The Graph plans to expand adoption of Substreams, a technology designed to process high-throughput blockchain data with lower latency. For institutional users, Substreams could serve as an alternative to conventional remote procedure call (RPC) polling, a standard method for querying blockchain data. The foundation also sees opportunities in artificial intelligence, developing tools including Model Context Protocol and Agent-to-Agent interfaces that allow AI systems to query blockchain data using natural language.

The Graph Foundation is also preparing an agent-focused product centered on portable digital memory, which would allow users to retain encrypted memory, preferences and interaction history across different AI models and agents rather than leaving that information locked within individual centralized services.

How Will The Graph's Economic Structure Change?

The foundation is introducing several initiatives designed to align protocol incentives with actual service delivery and network demand. These structural changes reflect a broader effort to make The Graph's economics more responsive to real-world usage patterns:

• Rewards Eligibility Oracle: This new system will connect Indexer rewards, payments to network participants who organize and serve blockchain data, more closely to actual service delivery rather than simply rewarding participants for maintaining allocations.
• Liquid Staking Initiative: The foundation is developing a system that converts staked GRT, The Graph's native token, into stGRT, providing participants with additional flexibility while retaining staking exposure and earning potential.
• Direct Indexer Payments: This feature will allow consumers and Gateway Operators, intermediaries that route queries to Indexers, to compensate Indexers for providing specific subgraphs at agreed-upon service levels.

These initiatives collectively represent an effort to move away from rewarding network participation based on static allocations and toward rewarding participants based on measurable demand and actual service delivery.

Does This Change Mean The Graph Is Becoming Centralized?

The Graph Foundation has explicitly stated that its expanded mandate does not represent a retreat from decentralization. Instead, the foundation distinguishes between decentralized network infrastructure and the organizational structure required to develop and maintain that infrastructure effectively. Independent Indexers and Gateway Operators will continue to underpin the network's permissionless architecture, meaning anyone can participate without requiring permission from a central authority.

The foundation's new role focuses on strategic execution, product development and chain integration, while the underlying network remains open and permissionless. This separation of concerns reflects a broader principle in Web3 infrastructure: the organization building a protocol does not need to be decentralized for the protocol itself to operate in a decentralized manner. The foundation will also continue collaborating with external teams around specialized areas such as chain integrations, specialized data services and targeted product development, though the funding structure will shift from broad operational grants to more strategically directed resource allocation.

What Does This Mean for Developers and Users?

For developers building applications on blockchain networks, The Graph's restructuring could mean faster feature development, more specialized data services and tighter integration with emerging use cases like artificial intelligence and institutional finance. The unified Subgraph Studio interface is intended to simplify how developers discover and consume blockchain data products, potentially lowering barriers to entry for new projects.

For institutional users and enterprises exploring blockchain applications, The Graph's focus on compliance, custody, forensics and regulatory reporting could provide new tools for validating blockchain data in privacy-oriented applications. As financial institutions experiment with blockchain technology, The Graph positions itself as a verification layer that enables authorized parties to validate information against underlying blockchain data without exposing sensitive details.

The foundation's emphasis on attracting specialized data service providers also suggests that external companies will be able to build businesses using The Graph as underlying infrastructure, potentially expanding the range of data products available to users and generating additional demand for the network and its Indexers.