James Cirrone

Alchemy has acquired subgraph platform Satsuma for an undisclosed amount to bolster its endeavors in the blockchain indexing space.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Blockchains house a distributed ledger, and often, that requires storage for a massive amount of raw data. Plus, the advent of layer-2 protocols mean more data is being stored on-chain than ever before.



Engineers spend lots of time indexing and querying — i.e. transforming, processing and storing — the portions of the data set they need in order to build their Web3 apps, Satsuma co-founder and CEO Jonathan Kau told Blockworks.&nbsp;



That time consuming process developers slog through was a key factor in Kau and fellow co-founder Dan Li starting Satsuma in 2022. Their solution? Subgraphs.&nbsp;



Subgraphs eliminate the need for developers to build their own data pipeline from scratch, which can be costly. And for those developing more complicated apps that need to store and display more dynamic information — perhaps something like daily total transaction volume — subgraphs make that much simpler, Kau said.&nbsp;



“Subgraphs make it 10 times easier for an engineer to build a data pipeline without running infrastructure, and without writing a ton of code,” said Kau.&nbsp;



According to Kau, The Graph made open-source subgraphs the norm. Satsuma&#8217;s subgraphs will be folded into Alchemy&#8217;s existing product suite as Alchemy Subgraphs, which will be using a combination of The Graph’s open-source code and its own proprietary code to create a unique product for developers.



Kau mentioned two clients that have already used Satsuma’s subgraphs, including GMX, a decentralized spot and perpetual exchange with over $475 million in total value locked.&nbsp;



“One of the things that they need to display is a chart that shows ticks or prices over time, and this is really hard to get if you&#8217;re trying to use the raw pieces of data,” Kau said, referring to GMX. “They write a subgraph so that they don&#8217;t have to write a data pipeline to get all that data.”



“It saves them a ton of time for their development,” Kau continued.



Treasure, a crypto-enabled gaming ecosystem, is another of Satsuma’s clients. One of its games uses a Satsuma subgraph to display players’ loot and quests while interacting on-chain.&nbsp;



Kau said that operations will continue normally as Satsuma’s services have been folded into Alchemy Subgraphs as of last month.&nbsp;



“The main things that we focus on are improving an engineer’s day to day. Saving them time, saving them money, and of course improving the end users experience — reducing the lag for data to show up and making things faster on the front end interface,” Kau said.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Alchemy acquires subgraph startup Satsuma

Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_6298197927acd" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Messari has won a $12.5 million developer grant from The Graph Foundation to further its efforts within the ecosystem</li>
 <li>The crypto intelligence platform said it will use the grant to grow resources and continue driving toward its mission of open data</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Crypto intelligence platform Messari said Thursday it has become the inaugural winner of a $12.5 million core developer grant from The Graph Foundation, earmarked for furthering data standards in Web3.



Messari will continue working on improving those standards by dedicating resources to subgraph development, of which it has already completed 20, the company said in a statement. 



The Graph is a protocol for building decentralized applications on Ethereum, as well as indexing and querying data from various blockchains. It is considered by some to be a critical layer of Web3 development, supporting 34 different networks including Ethereum, Near, Arbitrum and Polygon.



Its foundation, meanwhile, is charged with stewarding the protocol&#8217;s ecosystem while shepherding developers and community members.



A subgraph defines which data The Graph will index from Ethereum and how the data will be stored, according to a <a href="https://thegraph.com/docs/en/about/introduction/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blog post</a>. The issue, The Graph says, is that data points are required to be collected across multiple protocols and often face a lack of standardization, proving cumbersome and inefficient.



Two protocols that share many similarities, for example, AAVE and Compound, may have significantly different application programming interfaces. The Graph protocol lets developers bootstrap, what are termed subgraphs, to their existing project&#8217;s smart contracts to query blockchain data quickly.



Messari said the grant will help it continue driving open-source data standards and &#8220;high-quality&#8221; subgraph development within The Graph ecosystem.&nbsp;



&#8220;We are proud to have been awarded the first-ever Core Subgraph Developer grant by The Graph Foundation,&#8221; Messari CEO Ryan Selkis said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">&#8220;We share The Graph community&#8217;s belief that structured on-chain data should be accessible to everyone, not just enterprise data consumers.&#8221;</blockquote>



Messari also said it plans to build another 200 subgraphs for Web3 protocols and has begun creating standards and DeFi working groups to share best practices with other DeFi applications.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

The Graph Grants $12.5M in ‘First-Ever’ Effort To Drive Web3 Standards

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_61b21e90c81a1" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>There has been continued growth of 10% to 20% month-over-month for subgraphs and developers in the space</li>
 <li>Semiotic will be using the grant to grow a dedicated R&amp;D team to conduct core development work for The Graph</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The Graph Foundation has given Semiotic AI a $60 million grant that will be deployed over the next eight years, according to a release shared on Thursday by the companies.&nbsp;



“The Foundation’s grants are determined based on the roadmap, team size and resources needed to achieve pre-set goals,” Eva Beylin, director of The Graph, said in an interview with Blockworks.&nbsp;



<a href="https://thegraph.com/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Graph</a> is an indexing layer for Web3 and blockchain data that uses subgraphs, which are open APIs that use the programming language GraphQL.&nbsp;



These subgraphs retrieve blockchain data, secured through a decentralized network, which means decentralized applications, or dApps, can be permissionless with open APIs instead of relying on single servers. It supports indexing data from 25 different networks including Ethereum and its layer-2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, NEAR protocol, Celo and Fantom.&nbsp;



“Oftentimes, developers would have to build their own in-house databases each time a new dApp is created, which is time-consuming, costly and centralized,” Sam Green, co-founder and CTO of Semiotic AI said to Blockworks. “These databases act like walled gardens that can’t be accessed by third-parties, creating multiple redundancies that aren’t necessary,” Green added.&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.semiotic.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Semiotic AI</a> is a software startup that builds autonomous decision-making agents for decentralized markets. “Semiotic will be using the grant to grow a dedicated R&amp;D team that will be committed full-time to The Graph,” and its ecosystem as a core protocol developer during that time frame, Beylin said.&nbsp;



There has been continued growth of 10% to 20% month-over-month for subgraphs and developers in the space, she said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“This means that rain or shine, bull or bear market, developers in the Ethereum ecosystem are continuing to build dApps,” Beylin said.&nbsp;</blockquote>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-full is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg" alt="Eva Beylin, The Graph director" class="wp-image-12390" width="310" height="310" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=600 600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=150 150w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=257 257w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=261 261w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=219 219w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-09-The-Graph-Eva-Beylin_sq.jpg?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px" /><figcaption>Eva Beylin, The Graph director</figcaption></figure></div>



To date, over 24,000 developers have built subgraphs for applications like <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Uniswap" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Uniswap</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/?s=Decentraland" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Decentraland</a> and Synthetix.&nbsp;



The indexing layer recently announced new hosted service integrations to support cross-chain development with platforms like Solana, Cosmos and Arweave, Beylin noted. In the future, it plans to continue to support development there as these chains and other features go live on the decentralized network.&nbsp;



“Our vision has always been clear: index all the world’s public data in a decentralized way. The past year has proven our thesis that Web3 is the future,” Beylin said.



 



<hr class="wp-block-separator">
Get the day’s top crypto news and insights delivered to your inbox every evening.&nbsp;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/newsletter/?source=end" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Subscribe to Blockworks’ free newsletter</a>&nbsp;now.
<hr class="wp-block-separator">