The Graph, a protocol that indexes and serves blockchain data to applications, is now positioning its core products as critical infrastructure for autonomous AI agents – the latest in a string of crypto projects seeing artificial intelligence as a fresh use case.
The producer of subgraphs and substreams argues that the quality of on-chain data determines whether agents trading and rebalancing decentralized-finance (DeFi) portfolios have an accurate picture of the market. A subgraph is a custom API that extracts data from a blockchain and serves it up for financial dashboards or NFT marketplaces. A substream is a technology for low-latency price feeds.
The announcement shows how blockchain projects, grappling with a tough crypto market that has led to a dropoff in trading volume on decentralized exchanges, may see AI's white-hot growth as a use case that could lead to new business opportunities.
The Graph has rushed to offer AI-friendly infrastructure, including MCP servers (used to connect AI to external tools and apps) and agent skills.
In a blog post on Wednesday, The Graph Foundation, a support organization, leaned on a culinary metaphor to make the case that AI agents are only as reliable as the data they consume – that "you are what you eat."
"If an agent needs to check the current owner of a specific NFT before executing a trade, or the price of ETH at a given block, a Subgraph provides that state instantly," according to the post. "Whatever digital dish the agent desires to dine on, if it's stocked in the Subgraph larder, it'll be served up readily."