Blog
Updates, guides, and insights from the Lodestar team.
Yes, camp is better than amp. And we proved it.
We ran camp-node v0.5.1 head-to-head against the only amp binary anyone can actually download, on the same box, through the same RPC, with the numbers written down. camp is faster, leaner, more open, and speaks three query protocols to amp's one. Here's the honest version — wins, ties, and the one place amp still leads.
Hold the Wall: Announcing The Night's Watch
I'm one person with a laptop and a Claude Code subscription, and I can't deploy and maintain every data service the network needs on my own. The Night's Watch is an open community for the people who want to — to harden, test, maintain and ultimately run the open data layer The Graph was always supposed to have.
We Ran a Real Payment Through the Live Substreams Data Service
When we announced SDSCE we said the payment loop was proven on a fork. A fork isn't mainnet. So we staked real GRT against the live contract, registered a provider, and collected a real signed RAV on Arbitrum One — and the 1% burn reconciled to the wei. Here's exactly how we did it, and what it proves about the live service.
The Indexer Is the Farmer: Horizon Needs You to Run New Data Services
Horizon turns The Graph from a subgraph network into an open marketplace for any data service. But a marketplace with one supplier isn't a marketplace — it's a demo. We've deployed several new data services and we're dogfooding them alone. That has to change, and only indexers can change it.
Substreams, meet Horizon: announcing SDSCE
We built a community edition of the Substreams Data Service — a Horizon payment layer that lets providers sell Substreams data for TAP receipts — and deployed it to Arbitrum One. Here is what it is, how the money flows, and how providers can self-onboard.
camp Deep Dive: Decoded Protocol Data, Raw SQL, and the Flight Shim
A technical look at how camp v0.2.0 decodes Uniswap V3 and Graph Horizon events on-the-fly, how the raw SQL endpoint guards against abuse without a parser, and why ampd v0.0.36 required a Flight shim to stay online.
camp: A Free Decoded Arbitrum API Built on a Self-Hosted Amp Node
camp is a free, tip-fresh REST API for decoded Arbitrum One data — ERC-20 transfers, gas analytics, whale feeds, raw SQL — backed by a self-hosted Amp node running on a ThinkPad. Here's what it is, how it works, and what comes next.
Lodestar 3.0.0
Lodestar reaches 3.0.0. The dashboard is stable, the team is proud of what we built, and we're being honest about what comes next.
We're Stopping the Lodestar Indexer
We registered lodestar-indexer.eth two weeks ago. We're shutting it down. Here's the honest accounting.
Solana has entered the chat
We built a Horizon data service that indexes Solana — specifically Jupiter v6 swaps, streamed in real time from a Yellowstone gRPC node and served with TAP receipts via PostgREST. Here is what we built, how it works, and how to run or query it.
How to Claim a Sync Bounty as an Indexer
Developers can now post on-chain GRT bounties for subgraph deployments they need indexed. Here's the complete walkthrough for indexers — from spotting a bounty to collecting the GRT.
We Made Our Indexer Use Its Own RPC Network (And It Worked)
We run a Graph Protocol indexer. We also built Dispatch — a decentralised JSON-RPC gateway paid in GRT via TAP receipts. So we pointed our indexer at our own network. Here's what broke, and what it proved.
How to Start a Graph Indexer in 2026
We just did this. Everything that the docs don't tell you — hardware, RPC, Horizon's on-chain quirks, graft chains, and the honest economics.
Lodestar Is Now an Indexer
We've spent months building a dashboard that tracks indexers. Today we became one.
Dispatch Has a Second Provider: PaulieB from Graphtronauts
A single-provider network is infrastructure theatre. Two providers is where actual decentralisation starts. PaulieB from the Graphtronauts community just provisioned on Dispatch — here's what that means and why it matters.
How to Build and Deploy a Data Service on The Graph's Horizon Framework
A complete technical walkthrough of building a production Horizon data service — from Solidity contract to off-chain payment collection — drawn from two real implementations: Dispatch and SubstreamsDataService.
Dispatch vs Alchemy vs Infura: Real RPC Pricing Numbers
Concrete, code-derived cost comparisons between Dispatch and the major centralised RPC providers — plus a step-by-step guide to getting an RPC URL from the Dispatch network today.
How to Run a Local Amp Node, Part 2: What You'll See After a Day
Part 1 covered installing ampd and deploying a dataset. This post is about what happens next — what Amp actually writes to disk, what it costs in RAM, and the operational details the setup docs don't mention.
Dispatch: An Experimental Community JSON-RPC Service on Horizon
Every dApp on Earth relies on Alchemy or Infura for JSON-RPC. Dispatch is a community-built experiment exploring what a decentralised JSON-RPC data service on The Graph's Horizon protocol might look like — the first provider is live and serving real traffic on Arbitrum One.
Graphite: Write The Graph Subgraphs in Rust
AssemblyScript is the only language graph-node accepts — or so everyone assumed. Graphite compiles Rust to WASM that graph-node cannot tell apart from AssemblyScript. No patches. No forks. Already live on Arbitrum One.
GRT at the Floor: Illiquidity, Inflation, and the Long Game
The Graph's token is near historical lows. Here's the honest story of how it got there — and what, if anything, changes next.
How Much RAM Does It Actually Take to Index 1,000 Subgraphs?
The Graph's 184 GB 'Large' tier was written four years ago for a few hundred subgraphs. Here's what the memory math actually looks like for 1,000 — and what it would take to index all 15,500.
How to Run a Local Amp Node
Edge & Node's Amp is available as a hosted service — but you can run it yourself. Here's how to self-host a local ampd node, with no waitlists and no dependency on E&N infrastructure.
Arbitrum Indexer Infrastructure: Smaller Archives & Fixing Sync Lag
Two problems, one post: the new PathDB/PebbleDB archive node that cuts disk from 38TB to 4TB, and the two graph-node settings that stop your subgraphs sitting 10–30 blocks behind chain head forever.
Intro to Amp: The Graph's Blockchain-Native Database
Edge & Node built a blockchain-native database that turns smart contract events into SQL tables automatically. Here's what Amp is, how it works, and what it means for The Graph ecosystem.
Intro to Tycho and the Tycho Data Service
Tycho indexes DEX liquidity in real time so solvers, market makers, and searchers don't have to. Here's what it is, how it works, and why it's coming to The Graph Network.
The 3 Rules of Graph-Node Stack Architecture
There are many ways to set up your graph-node stack, but the constraints boil down to 3 rules. A practical guide to node roles, sharding, tiered indexing, and the pitfalls that catch everyone.