Talking Crypto #75 - Eva Beylin from The Graph
Primer: In this episode of Talking Crypto, Gabriel Haines speaks with Eva Beylin from The Graph. She shares about her role and what the project is about. Furthermore, she reveals how eGirl Capital started and how she got involved. Read on for more interesting insights.
Background
From Canada. Born and raised in Toronto
Went to business school studying global economics
Went into management consulting for banks, financial services providers, credit cards, etc.
Her brother was working at ConsenSys building Bounties Network. Learned about Ethereum
Didn't make sense for her to work on legacy infrastructure. Quit and joined Ethereum full-time in mid 2017
Joined OmiseGo and moved to Bangkok in 2018
"I was like running to the bathroom at my client site to see what was on Crypto Twitter for six months. And I was like, this is not sustainable. I need to dedicate my life." - Eva Beylin
Moved to North America after a year. Hopped around Ethereum Foundation and various startups before landing at The Graph
What Were Her Roles Like?
OmiseGo
Did strategy, market research, product-market fit. Worked closely with the Plasma team
Realized that the direction and timing of the work they were interested in did not align with the timeline of potential customers of OmiseGo
Ethereum Foundation
Did operational work. Helped start a recruiting and a grants program
The Graph
Started doing consulting work on their tokenomics and writing blog posts
Realized that it's probably the most important problem that needs to be solved — Web3 and DApps are not possible until the entire infrastructure is decentralized
Very challenging for DApp developers to get data from the blockchain. The subgraph created by The Graph abstracted a lot of that difficulty away
It is also open source, so people can build on top of each other's APIs
The Graph
Introduction
Any data that you see on any DApp is queried from the blockchain using APIs
The Graph's subgraphs are an API
Subgraphs allow developers to define the schema — the kind of data they want to see
Examples of subgraphs:
Trade volume for UNI token
Total ETH volume over 1 week
Subgraphs are open source and shared by different users (e.g. 20 teams using the Uniswap subgraph)
Instead of 20 teams building a server and indexing in-house, they can all rely on a subgraph and build off each other's work
Use Cases
Range from dashboards to analytics
Interesting use case is DAOs. DAOs are getting more usage and quite a number of DAOs have their own subgraphs now
Subgraphs
Subgraphs could be created by the project team themselves or a community member that is eager to support the team
Trying to get teams to come together and maintain the subgraph so that the subgraph can last for perpetuity
Subgraphs are written in TypeScript
Querying subgraphs are done in GraphQL
Have known designers who spent a few months learning TypeScript and were able to create their own subgraphs for curation
Do not need to be technical. Just need to be aware of DeFi trends, the developer and their reputation to identify whether the subgraph is high quality or not
GRT Token
Utility token. Can be staked to provide services and earn a yield
Indexers are node operators that stake GRT to provide indexing services. GRT holders could also delegate their GRT tokens to these indexers
Curation is where you stake on a specific subgraph
A developer of a subgraph would stake on their own subgraph, earning a portion of query fees on it. This incentivizes developers to create high quality subgraphs with high query volumes
Her Role At The Graph
Had an initial Graph team that she was part of
When the network launched, they separated into:
Edge & Node, a core developer team
Graph Foundation, who's responsible for ecosystem grants, governance, etc.
Over the last few months, they started giving out large ecosystem grants
Have at least 3 teams that are dedicated to full-time development on the protocol
Currently designing what their DAO looks like
Work with the Graph Council — governance process for all protocol updates. The Graph council represents all network stakeholders
Developer Onboarding
Realized the importance of product-market fit early on. Spent the early years refining the subgraph and developer environment
Spent past few months on community management and support
Have a forum where developers can post their feature requests
Holding monthly core dev calls and community calls
The Curator Program
Ran it for several months last year
To teach non-technical people more about the technical aspects of the project
Anyone can learn how to use GraphQL to query a subgraph
Any Interesting Use Cases For The Data?
APY Vision and Croco Finance are trying to figure out how to combine subgraph data across many protocols and to standardize the definitions used
For example, the definition of total value locked (TVL) differs across a lending protocol vs a DEX
DAOs are finding a need for either a tiering or reputation system using a subgraph as an aggregator of data
Gabriel: Data for DAOs are not necessarily on-chain. Probably would be in Discord
Eva: May work with Chainlink for that off-chain oracle part
Increasing usage of Bitcoin-related subgraphs. Pointing to the trend of Bitcoin on Ethereum. The same trend is seen on the Badger DAO subgraph
Challenges Faced In Building A Community
Did not expect the growth and usage of The Graph and Ethereum
Had some downtime issues over the last year on their hosted service
Downtime is proof of why a decentralized network is needed. Decentralization of the network has always been their goal
Staking In The Network
GRT is staked to provide services to the network. Their stake will be slashed if they behave maliciously
In a hosted service, servers serve queries with their own pricing model. For example, they can serve Uniswap queries and the Uniswap team pays for the query volume. This is similar to AWS or other kinds of infrastructure bills
In The Graph network, users are just paying indexers for the queries they are incurring. Would be much cheaper than running their own server
Difference in staking behaviour between indexers and curators:
Indexers are more economics-driven. Trying to earn rewards for running their hardware
Curators are more sentiment-driven, having more confidence in a particular DApp team
Thoughts After The Launch
Still have a lot of work to do
Next few months focused on helping DApps migrate over and improving indexing performance
Long term is focused on growth for the DApps
DAOs: the anti-government, government clubs
An article she wrote
As a Foundation, what they are doing is emulating a DAO
In this role, they realized that the role of government is to fund public goods
"So to me DAO being the anti-government government is you know, the anti-the typical way we think of government but similar providing services that governments often do provide." - Eva Beylin
Got stuck defining themselves as a government:
Doesn't feel like a government because they are rampant with incentives
Governments are supposed to be locked out and not self-interested
What we created in crypto can emulate a government (e.g. public goods funding, security, etc.), but doesn't actually need to have the same incentives or behaviour as a typical government
Typical form of government is one organization or multiple organizations working together. In a DAO, you have stakeholders with diverse perspectives, different incentives, and self-interest. However, they are all driving towards this public goods goal
How Do You Sustain A DAO?
Thinks that a DAO should not exist unless there's a reason to
Skeptical of DAO frameworks that pop up and seeking a reason to exist/seeking a community
Best long-term sustainable DAOs are ones that arise organically
Important to take a more active role and contribute to the DAO
What Are Her Favourite DAOs?
Thinks that the Yearn community is extremely impressive. Their product has only existed for a year and they have created a coordination tool that is being used by other DAOs
Would love to see more tools with direct use cases (e.g. Coordinape from the Yearn ecosystem)
eGirl Capital
Joined them a year ago. Started chatting with a few of them randomly
Got together in a DeFi Telegram group
Things started to get more serious. Everyone realized that they each have a lot to offer and have different expertise
They got security engineers, DApp developers, business people, and full-time traders
That diversity meant that they could provide a lot of feedback or ways to help other teams
Decided to create a real fund focused on the most critical projects and infrastructure DApps that they see as being the primitives of the future
How Do They Add Value To Projects?
Capital is only a part of the value they add
Their investment direction is based on what they are interested in and passionate about. There's no goal or directive overhanging
Not every single eGirl is part of every deal
Typically, they will be part of the community/active users in the projects they invest in. Helping at the grassroots level
Radicle, one of their investments, is used at The Graph. Hence, they are able to cross-pollinate their communities
Are Most Of The Members Anonymous?
Thinks that 3 members are doxxed
Met a few of them in person
Trying to dispel the idea that you cannot trust pseudonymous people. Most of them have participated in communities and have built up a reputation for themselves over the years
Why Did She Choose To Be Doxxed?
Has always been doxxed, even when she was getting to know them better
Felt it was better to just continue being herself
Popularity Of Anime Mimetics
Thinks that it has to do with the sex art movement
A lot of hentai is about positions or situations that men have never seen a woman in real life do and is part of their fantasy
Excited for VTubers. There's this technician called Miko who created an anime version of herself. Bullish on the crossover of anime, multimedia, and video
"Imagine if you could take that another level to like visual identity where like, not only are you a yield farmer, but you look like a panda and people just know you forever as this 3D panda or in CL's case, CL is a cat in a hazmat suit." - Eva Beylin
Projects That She's Excited About
Really excited about Connext, a project that eGirl Capital is invested in
Connext solves the liquidity fragmentation problem between blockchains and layer 2s
Looking forward to seeing more NFT decentralization
Have a few features on The Graph roadmap that will make it easier for developers on ZORA and Foundation to use a subgraph and provide richer data
Thoughts On Profile Picture Projects
Art is all about mimetics, the artist, and the story that they are creating around their work/community
The supply (e.g. 5000, 10000) doesn't matter. The overall market cap should be reflective of the community sentiment about that artist
Best strategy is to find an artist or community that you relate to and that you think is sustainable
Suggests that listeners can research artists that are outside of Twitter. Some of these artists already have a large following and when they enter crypto, they will be bringing their massive community in (e.g. Beeple)
Embracing The Meme
Always like to be authentic
The moment we start self-censoring, the creativity and virality potential goes out of the window
Memes that are the most sustainable are the ones that are able to unify the most people
"People love to experience that dopamine release when they feel like they've connected with someone, whether it's like a joke, and they're like, wow, that person got something that I never knew anyone else would get. And now I feel connected." - Eva Beylin
If You Had A Billboard In Times Square, What Would The Message Be?
Something with Ethereum and unicorns
Favourite Content Creators
Bankless is doing a great job creating institutional grade content in a digestible way
Messari team. Has several different funnels to propagate content
Nader Dabit from Edge & Node. Developer relations that focus on subgraphs. Created SDKs and walkthroughs for developers to pick up Web3
How Can Listeners Take Action
If you are interested in The Graph, join the Discord and get involved
Love to start bringing in more people to Web3/crypto. Noticed a funnelling problem where every team needs Rust or Solidity developers and instead of educating new people, teams are poaching from one another. Have to have each person training another person to grow the community
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