The Graph Soars on Arbitrum: An Update to the Complete Guide for Delegators

Phase 2 is complete:

5% of indexing rewards are now available on Arbitrum. Total indexing rewards on Arbitrum One are increasing over time, gradually moving over from L1. Indexers can now index subgraphs that are deployed on Arbitrum & earn indexing rewards for serving queries.

You can keep up with official updates on the Graph Forum GIP-0052: Here

GIP-0052 outlines the timeline and requirements for increasing rewards on Layer 2 in The Graph protocol. The proposal highlights the need to incentivize participation and secure the network by adjusting rewards to reflect the growing importance of L2 solutions. The plan includes a gradual increase in rewards for L2 delegators, with specific milestones and criteria to be met before each increment. This approach ensures a smooth transition, encourages delegators to migrate to L2, and promotes the continued growth and scalability of The Graph ecosystem.

ETA: week of May 22nd, 2023

Criteria:

• L2 with 5% rewards has been running for at least 2 weeks
• GRT issuance has followed the expected formula throughout this time
• Smart contracts are working properly:
• No smart contract issues have been reported
• Indexers have successfully opened and closed allocations on L2
• Indexers have successfully served queries on L2, and collected query fees
• Indexer Agent support for running on L1 and L2 with a single instance has been released
• GNS (Subgraphs / Curation) Transfer Tools have been released as per GIP-0046
• Stake and Delegation Transfer Tools have been released as per GIP-0046
• Vesting contract Transfer Tools have been released as per GIP-0046
• Transfer Tools have been deployed for at least one week, and participants can confirm they are able to use them without major issues.

ETA: week of June 5th, 2023

Criteria:

• L2 with 25% rewards has been running for at least 2 weeks
• GRT issuance has followed the expected formula throughout this time
• Smart contracts are working properly:
• No smart contract issues have been reported
• Indexers have successfully opened and closed allocations on L2
• Indexers have successfully served queries on L2, and collected query fees
• Some (> 1) subgraphs have been successfully transferred to L2 using the Transfer Tools.
• Some (> 1) indexers have used the stake Transfer Tool after the 25% increase.

ETA: week of August 7th, 2023

Criteria:

• L2 with 50% rewards has been running for at least 2 months
• GRT issuance has followed the expected formula throughout this time
• Smart contracts are working properly:
• No smart contract issues have been reported
• Indexers have successfully opened and closed allocations on L2
• Indexers have successfully served queries on L2, and collected query fees
• The number of indexers on L2 is at least 50% the number of indexers on L1
• Total Delegation on L2 is at least 50% of Delegation on L1 (or equivalently, a third of Delegation has been transferred to L2)
• Gateway QoS metrics on L2 are comparable to metrics on L1

ETA: week of September 4th, 2023

This last bump will essentially disable the L1 network, as indexers will have little incentive to keep indexing subgraphs there. For this reason, we should wait until most active subgraph owners have transferred to L2 to avoid outages, which is reflected in the last criterion.

Criteria:

• L2 with 95% rewards has been running for at least 1 month
• GRT issuance has followed the expected formula throughout this time
• Smart contracts are working properly:
• No smart contract issues have been reported
• Indexers have successfully opened and closed allocations on L2
• Indexers have successfully served queries on L2, and collected query fees
• The number of indexers on L2 is (still) at least 50% the number of indexers on L1
• Total Delegation on L2 is (still) at least 50% of total Delegation on L1
• Gateway QoS metrics on L2 are comparable to metrics on L1
• At least 90% of subgraphs that have had queries in the last month are now deployed on L2.

As mentioned in the previous article posted above, the answer is no, you don’t have to undelegate. The Graph is still in final stages of putting out L2 Transfer Tools as mentioned in GIP-0046 — here

You can track the Transfer Tools Graph Council voting process here

Once an Indexer has transferred at least part of their stake to L2, the Indexer’s associated Delegators should be able to also transfer their delegated GRT to the same Indexer in L2. (Note that if the Indexer transfers all of their stake, Delegators will not accrue rewards anymore until they transfer).

If the Delegator does not want to transfer to L2, they can undelegate and withdraw without waiting for the undelegating period, but only if the Indexer has transferred the full stake. The UI can allow doing this in a single transaction, making use of the multicall functionality in the Staking contract; under the hood this will be done by:

• Undelegating, which locks the tokens for withdrawal.
• Calling a new unlockDelegationToTransferredIndexer function which will unlock the tokens for withdrawal if the conditions are met, and
• Withdrawing the delegation now that it’s unlocked.

If the Indexer has only transferred part of their stake (meaning they are still operating on L1) and the Delegator wants to undelegate, they must wait for the undelegating period as per usual.

If instead the Delegator does want to transfer to L2, they can also do this through the Explorer UI, which uses a callhook like the other helpers, and also requires specifying an L2 beneficiary (in case the Delegator address does not exist in L2).