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

key takeaways

  • 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

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

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.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (8).png

Research

Meta-aggregators like Titan and Kamino Swap improve price execution for users, making the Solana swapping landscape more competitive. Jupiter has incorporated meta-aggregation features into its latest routing engine to keep users on its front end (own the user, own the flow). At large, teams are treating swaps as a commoditized complement, offering incredibly cheap or free swaps to own the end-user and increase demand for high-margin product offerings (multi-product DeFi). On another note, the divergence in the concentration of aggregator volume between DEXs suggests increased specialization at the DEX layer by asset type.

article-image

Attorneys weigh in on the issue in light of a changing US regulatory environment

article-image

A new report by top Ethereum stakeholders projects ETH at $8000

article-image

Onboarding the world to Bitcoin takes a series of firsts

article-image

If we get an altcoin season, it’ll be focused on tokens deemed “ fundamentally valuable enough for traditional public money and capital” to get involved with

article-image

Solana dropped nearly 10% amid mass crypto liquidations triggered by rising geopolitical strife

article-image

Investors moved to safe assets like the US dollar and gold, but bonds faltered