The Graph Curator Program Phase 1 — Mission Guide

Staking Facilities
7 min readOct 19, 2020

--

Phase 1 Missions of the Curator Program

The Graph’s Curator Program was kicked-off to bootstrap a community of people who are eager to contribute to the indexing and query layer of Web3 by supporting node operators (aka. Indexer) through signaling high quality and most frequently used subgraphs. Indexers and curators are the cornerstones of a curation market for APIs of on-chain data.

As a professional node operator for several Proof-of-Stake blockchains and advocates of decentralization and Web3 technologies, we are using our industry-grade architecture to support The Graph as an Indexer. However, a great bunch from our team is using their free time to also contribute to the network as curators.

To help anyone currently participating in the Curator Program, we wanted to aggregate useful information our team members gathered while completing missions of phase 1 of the Curator Program into this short guide.

While there are many tasks a curator can complete, it is not mandatory to complete them all. Just make sure to fill out the completion form you received from The Graph team after you completed some tasks.

Mission 1 — “Climbing Everest”

Everest is a decentralized registry of Web3 projects and is built on Ethereum, IPFS, and a subgraph. It is maintained and curated by the community and constitutes a good starting point for curators to engage with and contribute to the ecosystem.

There are four tasks you can complete during mission 1:

A) Contribute to Everest

B) Encourage others to list on Everest and/or to claim ownership of their projects

C) Provide feedback, report issues, and suggest new features to the Everest repo

D) Think of projects that could integrate Everest

Let’s take a brief look at each of the tasks

A) Contribute to Everest

There are several ways you can directly contribute to the Everest registry: adding a project, claiming a project, challenging a project, or voting on a challenged project. To get started with either of those actions, head over to everest.link & click on “Sign In” to connect your wallet. Currently, Metamask & Coinbase Wallet are supported. Before you continue make sure of the following:

  • have a sufficient amount of DAI in your wallet (10 DAI are required as a listing fee per project)
  • make sure to have enough ETH in your wallet to cover transaction fees
  • note that Ledger is currently not supported
Everest, a decentralized project registry powered by The Graph

Adding a project

Once you successfully connected your wallet, you can add a new project by clicking the “+” icon in the top right corner or by clicking the “Add a project” button in the hero section of Everest.

Fill out the required fields and make sure to provide accurate information to not see your project getting challenged. Once you filled out everything, click the “Add project” button at the bottom of the page. Confirm the transaction in your wallet to finalize the process.

Once you listed a project, it will appear under “Your Projects” in the profile section of Everest. To access this section, click your profile icon in the top right corner of the screen. You can always transfer, edit, or remove a project by clicking on the three dots on the project page.

Claiming a project

If you see your project owned by another entity, you can always request ownership. Visit the respective projects page and click the three dots to open the menu. Then click “Request ownership”. Please note that this will prompt a tweet with the affective parties tagged in it.

Challenging a project

If you see false, misleading, outdated information on a project page or a duplicate/fake project page, you can challenge it. Please note that you need to put up a deposit of 10 DAI as collateral. If the challenge is successful, the challenger will receive back the deposit and is additionally awarded 9 DAI. Should the challenge be unsuccessful, the deposit is transferred to the Reserve Bank and the challenger loses it.

To challenge a project, visit the respective project’s page, click the three dots to open the menu. and hit “Challenge”. Now you need to provide a project on whose behalf you are challenging. This can be a project you own or one that has been delegated to you. Furthermore, you need to provide reason(s) for your challenge. These can be

  1. Inaccurate project details (eg. outdated information, broken links).
  2. Inaccurate categories or sub-categories
  3. Misrepresentation of the project (eg. inaccurate data, fraudulent information about the project details or activities)
  4. The project is not, in a broad sense, working toward decentralization

Confirm the transaction in your wallet to finalize the process.

Voting on a challenged project

Voting on a challenged project helps to curate a qualitative registry in a decentralized manner. To see a list of all the projects that are currently being challenged, visit the overall “Projects” section on Everest and filter for “Challenged projects”.

Click on any project to see details about why it was challenged. Double-check whether or not the challenger was right or not and then decide if you want the challenged project to be removed or kept by either clicking “remove” or “keep”. Note that you need to provide a project on whose behalf you are challenging. This can be a project you own or one that has been delegated to you. Confirm the transaction in your wallet to finalize the process.

B) Encourage others to list on Everest and/or to claim ownership of their projects

This task is quite self-explanators: get people to list projects on Everest or help projects get claimed to ensure accurate owners.

C) Provide feedback, report issues and suggest new features to the Everest repo

You can suggest new categories or subcategories as well as provide feedback in the form of feature ideas, bug fixes or design suggestions the Curator Program Repo.

D) Think of projects that could integrate Everest

Here you can let your imagination run free: what are ways through which the Everest dApp or Subgraph can be integrated into other dApps? What other valuable on-chain registries should exist? Drop your ideas in the completion form you received from The Graph team!

You can find more information about Everest here.

Mission 2 — “Web3 Data & Beyond”

Besides Everest, curators are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the Graph Explorer.

There you find a list of all the subgraphs that are deployed to power popular apps like UniSwap, Moloch, Compound, or PoolTogether.

“The best thing about subgraphs is that any app can use them since they’re open APIs, thus significantly reducing redundant backend development work. They also allow developers to run serverless applications, eliminating the central point of failure.”

— The Graph Team

Again, there are four tasks in Mission 2:

A) Play around with the Graph Explorer

Visit thegraph.com/explorer and check out the vast amount of apps that are using subgraphs for their products. Click on any entry to explore how each specific dApp leverages a subgraph for their product.

B. Suggest new subgraphs

Once you are familiar with the explorer, try to think of additional subgraphs as well as smart contracts, datasets, or dApps that should be indexed.

C. Evangelize subgraph usage

Know of any developer or project that could build a new subgraph or integrate other subgraphs live on mainnet? Spread the word about the Graph! As of now, Ethereum, IPFS, and POA are supported.

D. Create content about subgraphs and open data

This is for the creatives, writers, and content producers. Help others to get familiar with The Graph by creating educational content, funny memes, or by sharing your insights and experiences on your social channels.

Make sure to join The Graph’s discord channel to keep up to date with the Curator Program and to connect with fellow curators, Indexers, and other stakeholders from the ecosystem.

Let’s connect

In case you have any questions, need more assistance or simply want to chat, always feel free to reach out to us via Telegram, eMail, Twitter or LinkedIn!

--

--

Staking Facilities

We operate industry-grade architecture and offer non-custodial staking services. We’re advocates for web 3.0, set to accelerate its’ adoption!