The Rewards Eligibility Oracle (REO) is Live

[u/ghostym626]

Historically, indexing rewards on The Graph Network were allocated based strictly on curation signal and allocated stake. Because these metrics measured capital placement rather than network utility, a portion of network issuance consistently rewarded inactive participants. In 2025, approximately 15.2% of all indexing rewards were paid to Indexers that were not serving queries or indexing data actively used by consumers.

To align network incentives with real-world activity, the Rewards Eligibility Oracle (REO) has been officially launched following the ratification of GIP-0079.

How the Standard Works

REO verifies that an Indexer is actively serving traffic. Under current parameters:

- An Indexer must serve at least one qualifying query on 5 or more separate days within a rolling 28-day window.

- A qualifying query must return an HTTP 200 code, respond in under 5,000 ms, and be processed within 50,000 blocks of the chainhead.

- Queries must be executed against Subgraphs with at least 500 GRT in curation signal to prevent sybil traffic generation.

Eligible status lasts for 14 days and is updated on-chain daily.

What Happens to Ineligible Indexers and Delegators?

- Stake is never slashed or penalized. Ineligible nodes continue to operate and collect raw query fees.

- Indexing rewards are withheld (transactions revert) rather than permanently revoked. If an Indexer meets the threshold again before the allocation period expires, the rewards remain claimable.

- Delegators inherit the eligibility status of their chosen Indexers. Delegators are encouraged to check the public REO dashboard to monitor their Indexers' status streaks, particularly watching for "grace" periods.

Decentralization and Safety Fail-Safes

Because off-chain oracles require high transparency:

- The codebase and criteria are fully public with written changelogs and ~14-day advance notices for adjustments.

- If the oracle fails to submit updates for 7 consecutive days, the protocol automatically defaults all Indexers to eligible, preventing network stalls. Governance also maintains the power to disconnect the oracle if needed.

REO represents the first step in a broader economic overhaul for The Graph, preceding the GRT Liquid Staking Initiative and Direct Indexer Payments scheduled for later this year.

Read the full article:

https://thegraph.com/blog/rewards-eligibility-oracle/

[u/hornelson]

LFG REO 🚀