SubQuery Introduces Project Boosting to Help Accelerate Network Adoption

5 min readJan 26, 2024

Some projects in our network are considered “Public Good” projects, for example; network dictionaries and the various SubQuery projects that the official Network app runs on. In these cases, we need to ensure Indexers will run and host them, but generally, there will be no single customer that will take the lead in financing these requests

Previously, we’ve used a combination of closed plans and agreements + sponsored flex plans (PAYG) to reward Indexers. However, it’s hard to strike the correct balance of financial sustainability when many indexers compete to serve these projects and where we can only give our minimum reward to each.

We have found the efficiency of the budget spending is a problem when there is low traffic and therefore low budget. Sometimes we even have 30+ Indexers, but due to budget constraints, only some of them can earn rewards.

Introducing network inflation to supercharge growth

The solution to this comes from network inflation as a reward source for Indexer rewards, in addition to rewards for productive work.

- Reward for productive work: This is the existing reward structure with the project with the various payment methods that we have pioneered, e.g. serving requests in valid service agreements or flex plans.

- Network inflation rewards: This is allocated to all Indexers for successfully running projects and serving requests.

In our vision, as the network matures, rewards for productive work will dominate Indexer rewards. However, we understand that in the early days, we will leverage Network Inflation rewards to help bootstrap the network as applications get deployed and the end user base scales.

In the SubQuery Network, the inflation rate is expected to be 1.2%. The majority of these rewards act as network inflation rewards (1%), while the remainder is allocated to the SubQuery Treasury to fund various programmes.

Consumer Boosting

The idea behind consumer boosting is to allow consumers an alternative way of identifying common good projects that they would like to be run across the network. It’s specifically to allow projects to be free to consumers, while still ensuring that Indexers are best-matching supply of indexing compute with demand from Consumers. The result is:

- The SubQuery market is efficiently matching supply with demand for common-good projects (where the market does not operate as expected).

- Consumers can receive heavily discounted access to these projects that they boost.

Consumer boosting is tightly integrated with our network inflation reward system. In fact, consumer boosting is the key aspect that controls what project deployments that the network inflation is allocated to.

Consumer Boosting is similar to delegating, where Consumers (individuals or teams that would like to access and query data from Node Operators on the network), boost a specific data indexer project or RPC endpoint (i.e. project deployment) by staking tokens against it.

The difference between boosting and delegating, is that in return, boosters receive free request units each Era and they attract more Node Operators to a project by allowing them to receive a higher cut of rewards from network inflation.

How are boosters rewarded

These rewards are distributed to each project deployment based on the proportion of boosted tokens each project deployment is allocated at the end of each Era.

This reward pool is then split into two groups:

- Allocation rewards are rewards provided to Node Operators (and their Delegators) based off their staking proportion on that project deployment, this encourages more Node Operators to run infrastructure for this project deployment, as they get a larger set of rewards into their reward pool.

- Query rewards are rewards that are granted back to those that boosted the project deployment, they are granted in the form of free request units to that project deployment.

So when might you boost a project deployment?

- Anyone can boost a project deployment to encourage indexers to run common good projects like dictionaries.

- Architects (Project Creators) may boost to encourage indexers to run their project so the market can observe their data.

- Indexers could boost projects they are profitable in to potentially receive more rewards for that project from network inflation (especially when they are already constrained by their staking limits).

Note that since boosting rewards for the Booster are in free query units, rather than in SQT, if an individual is looking to maximise rewards and yield from their spare SQT, they should instead look to delegate, rather than boost.

There are other key differences:

- Consumers receive no direct SQT reward for boosting a project, and there is no corresponding risk to boosted tokens as well. The rewards that you receive are in a higher likelihood of more node operators serving the project deployment, and free query units each Era.

- There is no withdrawal lockup period, and consumers will receive the same amount of SQT that was originally locked to boost the project.

- There is no penalty or lockup period to shift your boosted tokens to a different project/deployment

Conclusion

Boosting is a new way devised by the SubQuery Network to fund and maintain “Public Good” projects, for example; network dictionaries and the various SubQuery projects that the official Network app runs on. It’s designed to solve the problem of budget efficiency spending when there is low traffic and therefore low budget.

The solution to this comes from network inflation as a reward source for Indexer rewards, in addition to rewards for productive work, network inflation rewards are allocated to all Indexers for them successfully running projects and serving requests.

In our vision, as the network matures, rewards for productive work will dominate Indexer rewards. However, we understand that in the early days, we will leverage our innovative approach to network inflation rewards through project boosting to help bootstrap the network as applications get deployed and the end user base scales.

You can read more about project boosting on our up-to-date documentation here.

About SubQuery

SubQuery Network is innovating web3 infrastructure with tools that empower builders to decentralise the future. Our fast, flexible, and open data indexer supercharges dApps on over 150 networks, enabling a user-focused web3 world. Soon, our Data Node will provide breakthroughs in the RPC industry, and deliver decentralisation without compromise. We pioneer the web3 revolution for visionaries and forward-thinkers. We’re not just a company — we’re a movement driving an inclusive and decentralised web3 era. Let’s shape the future of web3, together.