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# Data Aggregators
## **What is Data Aggregation?**
Like a blockchain-based version of Google, data aggregators use a process called indexing to make it easy for developers and users to quickly search a blockchain for important data.
Indexing is method of organizing information to make data easier to find. As the name implies, it’s very similar to the index at the end of a book – instead of going through every page in a book, the index allows us to quickly scan an alphabetical list to find the page number of the information we need.
Google became a multi-trillion dollar company by mastering the art of indexing, and when it comes to blockchains, the process will be just as important.
Unfortunately, there are two main problems with current indexing strategies:
* It can be very time consuming and redundant for blockchains to do it themselves
* Many existing aggregators are centralized
So how do we solve this problem in a decentralized manner? One possible solution comes through a protocol called The Graph.
## **How do Data Aggregators Work?**
While the project is sometimes called the “Google for blockchains”, a better way to think about The Graph is as a decentralized network of thousands of Googles.
Created by Yaniv Tal the project is an open-source, fully-decentralized indexing protocol for blockchain data.
There are several key players in The Graph’s ecosystem:
* **Consumers:** The end-users of The Graph that initiate search requests and pay fees to the Indexers
* **Indexers:** These are the “workhorses” of the network that provide indexing services in exchange for a fee. Indexers are independent providers that operate in a decentralized marketplace known as the Query Market. To incentivize proper behavior, indexers must stake GRT (The Graph’s native token) tokens as collateral.
* **Delegators:** Loan GRT to indexers to stake and receive a portion of the profits
In addition to the above, the network also hosts curators, who find promising networks to index and fisherman and arbitrators, which serve as a form of quality control.
The Graph has achieved significant traction since its launch:
* Developers have built over 25,000 subgraphs indexing a variety of networks such as Arbitrium, Avalanche, Celo, Ethereum, Fantom and IPFS, and this figure is growing at 10% to 15% monthly.
* It is used by several major DeFi projects including Uniswap, Aave, Balancer and Synthetix
* Over 20 billion queries per month were performed in April, 20x more than the previous year and roughly 10% to 15% of Google’s \~150 billion searches per month.
## **Who are the Key Players in the Data Aggregation Market?**
While The Graph currently dominates decentralized data aggregation, its biggest competition still comes from centralized providers such as Scout, BigChainDB, Dune Analytics and Google’s BigQuery.