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

Messari, which already has 20 subgraphs within the ecosystem to date, said it wants to add a further 200, focusing on Web3 protocols

article-image

Blockworks Exclusive art by axel rangel

share
  • Messari has won a $12.5 million developer grant from The Graph Foundation to further its efforts within the ecosystem
  • The crypto intelligence platform said it will use the grant to grow resources and continue driving toward its mission of open data

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’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 blog post. 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’s smart contracts to query blockchain data quickly.

Messari said the grant will help it continue driving open-source data standards and “high-quality” subgraph development within The Graph ecosystem. 

“We are proud to have been awarded the first-ever Core Subgraph Developer grant by The Graph Foundation,” Messari CEO Ryan Selkis said.

“We share The Graph community’s belief that structured on-chain data should be accessible to everyone, not just enterprise data consumers.”

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.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 24 - 26, 2026

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Flying_Tulip.png

Research

Flying Tulip's perpetual put option provides real principal protection, but investors must pay a valuation premium today for products that have to be built over the next 24 months. This structure works best as a stablecoin substitute where the put allows continuous monitoring—accept opportunity cost in exchange for asymmetric upside if the team executes on its ambitious cross-collateral architecture.

article-image

As flows consolidate and volatility fades, finding edge now means knowing which games are still worth playing

article-image

Value distribution came to $1.9 billion distributed in Q3, though total revenues have yet to beat 2021 heights

article-image

MegaETH public sale auction ends tomorrow, and the free money machine has attracted people who like free money

article-image

With tBTC under the hood, Acre abstracts bridging and converts non-BTC rewards to bitcoin

article-image

Accountable is also eyeing mid-November for mainnet launch

article-image

“Adjusted for size, I think it may be the most successful ETP launch of all time,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan says