My Curation Journey 

I minted my first curation shares in October 2022. My strategy is young and will definitely change and evolve over time, but I know that I plan to take a long-term view rather than a short-term view. Bots will always be better than a human at being the first to signal on a subgraph. This is not always a concern (bots are not always active nor do they signal to every single new subgraph) but it is certainly pushing me towards looking for subgraphs to signal to that are generating query fees already, or I believe will do so in the future rather than trying to just be first and then get out when new Curators enter or fees have stacked up. The types of projects that are attractive to me as a Curator are projects that I have heard of or use myself. In addition, I look for projects that have a decent amount of traffic already and have growth possibilities in use as the web3 ecosystem expands. Many of these projects have competition, but on The Graph the main incentive is to curate to subgraphs which will generate fees, not necessarily the project that will “win” or have the most users. Projects which show an interest in decentralization are preferable to projects that just have a lot of users. One of the best ways to know if a project’s subgraph is going to be worth curating on is to directly ask the team how often they intend to query the subgraph themselves for their project. If they published the subgraph hoping others will use it, and they don’t plan to do much querying themselves, I don’t like that as much as one where the subgraph publisher is actively using it. There is a little bit of a dichotomy when analyzing subgraphs for curation. It is hard to avoid the thought that you want your shares to increase in value in terms of GRT. When you are analyzing a subgraph, the hope is that the subgraphs that are a good investment for the Curator are also worth indexing and will provide value to the network and the web3 ecosystem at large. Aligning the incentives of all the participants of web3 and coordinating their work to be not only individually beneficial but also beneficial to the rest of ecosystem is the core goal of the tokenomics of GRT. The role of Curator has significantly more risk involved than delegating, and this creates an interesting test of the quality of the incentive structure.

With that in mind, how does a holder of GRT evaluate the role of Curator and decide whether the role is a good fit? This is a role that really demands an active mindset. While delegation can be a set it and forget it approach, a more passive role complete with reinvestment of yield, curation must be a more active approach. New subgraphs are constantly published and need signaled GRT in order to attract Indexers. The value of your shares can fluctuate wildly with the underlying value of GRT as well as with the amount of GRT signaled on the subgraph in the form of GRT from Curators as well as query fees that are collected. If you care about the quality of your signals on top of wanting to make a profit, a lot of this becomes more interesting. While the value of your shares is unpredictable, the value generated by the subgraph and associated projects is something that can be researched and understood from fundamentals, much like a traditional company. Having skills that enable you to analyze subgraphs such as building relationships with teams and understanding the trajectory of the ecosystem in general will make you a valuable Curator in the space. Everyone belongs to a unique circle of people and has a different background. Consider what skills and connections you have and know that everyone can leverage their unique position to benefit whatever protocol or association they chose to work with, maybe for you, it could be The Graph as a Curator. Being someone who is willing to go after the information, connect people, and make decisions is much rarer and more valuable than many realize. I urge you to try and apply your experience to this exciting work, you might be surprised by your success, and we will be incredibly grateful for your contributions.

If you are already active in crypto, or if you already have a relationship with those involved with web2 or web3, even as someone with the bravery to learn something new having nothing other than the knowledge that you figure it out, I believe that The Graph and curation in particular is a wealth of challenging and stimulating activity. The promise of web3 is to enable all of us to capture the value of our contributions, rather than losing much of it to a central entity. We are pioneering a new way to engage and see tangible results or rewards from this effort. There are real risks but the rewards, both financial and otherwise have been well worth it in my experience.