The Graph provides blockchain data and receives query fees from demand-side users. Supply-side users also pay fees for delegating to a node, curating subgraphs, disputes and when slashing occurs (revenue). Indexers, delegators and curators perform indexing services for which they are compensated by The Graph (expenses).

The Graph is an indexing protocol built on Ethereum and other blockchains. The Graph was founded by Brandon Ramirez, Jannis Pohlmann, Yaniv Tal and launched in 2018.

GRT tokenholders own and govern the protocol. They currently take all of the total fees (revenue). The Graph’s investors include Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Framework ventures, etc.

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The Graph

# The Graph Average fees per user (AFPU) Methodology

## 1. Overview

Average fees per user (AFPU) measures the average daily fee revenue generated per active user on The Graph protocol. This metric calculates the total fees collected from all protocol activities (querying, curation, delegation, and disputes) divided by the number of distinct daily active users. AFPU provides insight into the revenue efficiency and monetization rate of The Graph's decentralized data indexing protocol.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation uses several types of blockchain data:
- **Smart contract events**: Parsed events from The Graph protocol contracts on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Polygon chains, including billing, staking, curation, and dispute manager contract interactions
- **Token transfer events**: GRT token transfer records on Ethereum and Arbitrum chains, specifically transfers to burn addresses (null and dead addresses)
- **External price data**: End-of-day token price feeds for GRT to USD conversion
- **Token metadata**: GRT token contract addresses across different chains for proper identification and decimal handling

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Query fees calculation
- **Purpose**: Captures fees paid for data querying services on The Graph network
- **Logic**: Extracts `TokensPulled` events from The Graph billing contracts on Arbitrum and Polygon chains. Each event represents a user paying GRT tokens to query indexed data from subgraphs. The `amount` field contains the fee paid in GRT tokens. Special handling is applied for the migration date (December 13, 2022) where Polygon query fees are manually added since user balances were transferred to Arbitrum during this transition
- **Key fields**: `amount` from billing events, `user` address as the fee payer, `block_timestamp` for daily aggregation, and hardcoded token addresses for GRT identification

### Component B: Curation fees calculation  
- **Purpose**: Captures curation taxes paid when curators signal on subgraphs
- **Logic**: Processes `Signalled` events from The Graph curation contracts on Ethereum and Arbitrum. When curators deposit GRT to signal confidence in subgraphs, a percentage is collected as a curation tax. The `curationTax` field in these events represents the fee amount paid to the protocol
- **Key fields**: `curationTax` amount from curation events, curator address as the fee payer, and chain-specific GRT token addresses

### Component C: Delegation fees calculation
- **Purpose**: Captures fees paid when delegators stake GRT tokens to indexers
- **Logic**: Matches `StakeDelegated` events from staking contracts with corresponding GRT token burn transactions in the same transaction. When users delegate stakes, a fee is burned (sent to null/dead addresses). The calculation finds delegation events, then looks for token transfers to burn addresses within the same transaction using transaction hash and log index matching. The burned amount represents the delegation fee
- **Key fields**: `tokens` from stake events for delegation amount, `value` from token transfers for burned fee amount, matching on transaction hash and sequential action IDs

### Component D: Dispute fees calculation
- **Purpose**: Captures fees from dispute resolution activities in the protocol
- **Logic**: Processes two types of dispute events from dispute manager contracts. For accepted disputes (`DisputeAccepted`), matches with `StakeSlashed` events to calculate the net slashing fee (slashed amount minus reward to disputor). For rejected disputes (`DisputeRejected`), uses the deposit amount as the fee. Both types represent fees collected by the protocol for dispute resolution services
- **Key fields**: `tokens` from dispute events for deposit amounts, `tokens` and `reward` from slashing events for net slashing calculation

### Component E: Daily active users calculation
- **Purpose**: Counts distinct users interacting with The Graph protocol each day
- **Logic**: Identifies unique user addresses from all fee-generating activities across all chains. Tracks users from billing events (queriers), staking events (delegators), curation events (curators), and dispute events (disputors). Uses HyperLogLog data structure for efficient distinct counting across multiple dimensional breakdowns including overall project level, chain level, user type, and product level
- **Key fields**: User addresses from all event types (`user`, `delegator`, `curator`, `fisherman`), categorized by user type and aggregated by day

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: All four fee types are unioned together into a single daily fees dataset, with each record containing the fee amount, chain, fee type, and timestamp
- **Currency conversion**: GRT token amounts are converted from wei units to standard token units by dividing by 10^18, then converted to USD using end-of-day GRT price feeds matched by date
- **Time aggregation**: Both fees and user counts are aggregated to daily boundaries using timestamp truncation to day level
- **Final calculation**: AFPU is calculated by dividing the total daily fees (in USD) by the distinct daily active user count for each day. Days with zero users are filled with zero AFPU values, while days with zero fees but active users result in zero AFPU

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

The GraphGRT

Average fees per user (AFPU)

Average fees per user (AFPU)

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