This documentation was contributed by Jim Cousins as part of his work at The Graph Foundation. Thanks also to the following community members for peer review and other contributions to this article:
In this guide:
This is an Indexer-specific question, depending on two revenue streams:
Projected revenue from Staking Rewards: Staking or Indexing rewards are heavily dependent upon the amount of GRT allocated within the network. The example tables below show how Indexer revenue can be impacted as a larger amount of the total GRT in the market enters the protocol and is allocated.
Examples showing how effective network inflation rates impact Indexer revenue
Projected revenue from Query Business: The Indexer's knowledge of the market's appetite for query business on subgraphs at a specific price or price range
From those two revenue streams, how much is an Indexer willing to sacrifice to transaction fees?
How does the total projected revenue impact overall subgraph selection?
Early-stage subgraph selection outcomes are based largely on Indexer size (self stake and delegation), which drives total revenue potential
Large self stake, large delegation → large stream of revenue generated via staking rewards → scope to support the costs of serving thousands of subgraphs
Medium self stake, medium delegation → moderate stream of revenue via staking rewards → scope to support hundreds of subgraphs
Small self stake, small delegation → low stream of revenue via staking rewards → scope to support less than one hundred subgraphs
Things to consider depending on the size of your Indexing operation: