The Graph explores expanding to Bitcoin, Polkadot and others

Binance Smart Chain and Cosmos are among the blockchains being considered to join Ethereum and IPFS

Indexing protocol The Graph announced yesterday that it is considering providing support for other Layer 1 blockchains following their successful mainnet launch on Ethereum. To support Web3 development and enable querying of open APIs called subgraphs for data across many blockchains, The Graph is looking at expanding to Bitcoin, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot, Cosmos, Avalanche, Solana, NEAR and Celo. These would join its current supported chains of Ethereum and the InterPlanetary File system (IPFS), a peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data.

Ethereum will remain the standard for The Graph Network–smart contracts for The Graph Network are deployed on Ethereum and the Graph Token (GRT) is an ERC-20 token and will remain so. The Graph will also continue to collaborate with State Channels, Connext and Consensys R&D to contribute to Ethereum Scalability.

Many applications on Ethereum, such as Aave, Synthetix, Uniswap and Decentraland, are already integrated with The Graph and use subgraphs to retrieve data. By making it easier to access on-chain data, The Graph aims to encourage Web3 development and help Ethereum developers build interoperable applications.

The Graph Foundation Director, Eva Beylin, explained, “Although the protocol now supports Ethereum and IPFS, The Graph is blockchain agnostic. We are really looking forward to adding more developers and Layer 1 chains to our community. While The Graph is built on Ethereum, we also believe in uniting the ecosystem under a multi-blockchain future, making it easy to develop and use Web3. By providing subgraph support across chains, developers will be able to utilize the best of whatever each blockchain has to offer.”

Improving blockchain interoperability is important–applications will need to interact with many chains and protocols as the DeFi and NFT spaces see continued growth. So far, over 10,000 active developers have deployed more than 7,000 subgraphs to help with this mission.

The number of subgraphs will only rise with further Layer 1 integrations, while dApps will be able to function in a multi-blockchain environment. Using subgraphs also means that developers don’t need to learn the chain’s underlying smart contracting language or build a proprietary server or back-end infrastructure when developing apps.

The Graph is currently appraising the candidate blockchains for integration. Key criteria include alignment with The Graph’s goals, number of developers and applications, ease of integration and excitement around the blockchain from the community.

The Foundation is distributing up to 25 million GRT in grants this year for decentralised applications, tooling, protocol infrastructure and community building, and anyone contributing to the candidate blockchains can apply to The Graph Grants Program. The additional blockchains are expected to be onboarded in the next few months.