What is The Graph?⁠

he Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying blockchain data. The Graph makes it possible to query data that is difficult to query directly.

Projects with complex smart contracts like Uniswap and NFTs initiatives like Bored Ape Yacht Club store data on the Ethereum blockchain, making it really difficult to read anything other than basic data directly from the blockchain.

In the case of Bored Ape Yacht Club, we can perform basic read operations on the contract like getting the owner of a certain Ape, getting the content URI of an Ape based on their ID, or the total supply. This can be done because these read operations are programmed directly into the smart contract. However, more advanced real-world queries and operations like aggregation, search, relationships, and non-trivial filtering are not possible. For example, if we wanted to query for Apes that are owned by a certain address and filter by one of its characteristics, we would not be able to get that information by interacting directly with the contract itself