⚔️ Join The Night's Watch
→ discord.gg/484vgDETEZ
Take the vow. Pick your order. Help hold the wall.
I want to invite you to something. It's called ⚔️ The Night's Watch ⚔️, and it's an open community for people who still believe in The Graph's original vision — an open, permissionless, thriving network for all ecosystem participants, not a walled garden with a nicer paint job.
Let me be honest about why it exists, because the honest version is the only one worth telling.
One dude with a laptop
Over the last few months I've had my head down building things I genuinely believe matter for the network. A JSON-RPC data service. A Substreams Data Service, community edition. A Solana data service. Camp and its data service. Lodestar itself. A whole catalogue of what Horizon could be.
But when you strip away the branding, the truth is this: I'm just one person with a laptop and a Claude Code subscription. I pay north of $250 a month out of pocket just to keep the things I've already deployed alive. I would love to deploy and maintain every data service and tool I've shipped — properly, with the uptime and hardening they deserve. I simply don't have the resources to do it alone.
That doesn't mean I'm going to stop. I won't. But I've come to believe that a community can move the needle far further than I can — and do it in a way that's actually sustainable, instead of resting on one person not burning out.
So that's the first half of the mission. The Night's Watch exists to further develop, harden, test, maintain, and ultimately deploy and operate the things I've been building solo:
- the JSON-RPC service (Dispatch)
- the Substreams Data Service (community edition)
- the Solana data service (Seahorn)
- Camp and the Camp data service
- and many more to come
These shouldn't live or die by whether I personally have a free weekend. They should be run by the people who depend on them.
Holding the wall for the realm
The second half of the mission is bigger than any one service.
The Night's Watch will fight for decentralizing the network from start to finish. Lodestar already enables things that were previously reserved for the Studio and the Explorer — functionality that had quietly become a central point of dependence. That's not an accident of the design; it's the whole point. But we have to keep pushing, because centralized, closed services and central points of failure are the exact opposite of what The Graph and web3 are supposed to stand for.
So the goal is plain: match, and then surpass, the functionality of the Studio and the Explorer — and make sure the network stays open to all, with no gatekeepers and no single point of control or failure. A network that depends on one company's frontend isn't decentralized. It's a demo with good marketing.
If you've read "The Indexer Is the Farmer", you already know the shape of the problem: an open marketplace with one supplier isn't a marketplace. The Watch is the answer to that — more hands on the wall.
The orders of the Watch
Like the order it's named for, the Watch has three ways to serve — pick whichever fits, or several:
- 🛰️ Rangers — build new data services, prototype, scout new sources and chains.
- 🔨 Builders — run the indexers, operate and maintain the infrastructure.
- 📜 Stewards — write the docs, support people, onboard newcomers, keep the comms running.
- 🤝 Friends of the Watch — delegators, curators, and anyone backing the mission without operating.
It's mission-first and not a faction. Everyone serious about an open Graph is welcome here, whatever other banner they fly. We hold the wall for the realm — not for any one house.
Take the vow
If any of this resonates, come and stand a watch.
⚔️ discord.gg/484vgDETEZ
Take the vow, pick your order, and say hello. The data must flow, and someone has to keep it flowing through the long night.
That someone shouldn't have to be one dude with a laptop. 💜🧡