GRC-20

Semantic & Data Protocol

GRC-20 is an open data standard for structuring and connecting knowledge on The Graph — entities, attributes, and values grouped into governed "Spaces," with relations as graph edges and Protobuf-encoded, content-addressed records. Authored by Yaniv Tal and Byron Guina (Draft v0.1.0, CC0), it aims to "do for knowledge what ERC-20 did for fungible tokens": a common, composable schema any web3 application can read and write against, rather than each project inventing its own. Geo Genesis is the standard's flagship application; Hypergraph is its local-first SDK/framework.

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Details

License CC0 (public domain) — stated directly in the GIP header.
Dev Status 📝 Draft
Owner The Graph Improvement Proposals process (graphprotocol/graph-improvement-proposals repo); authored by Yaniv Tal and Byron Guina. No single corporate owner — a public, CC0-licensed specification.
Governing Body The Graph's Graph Improvement Proposals (GIP) process and repository — a public review track, not a neutral standards body (contrast W3C/IETF). No corporate owner of the specification itself.
Governing Body - List
  • Internet Engineering Task Force
Country Not specified — GRC-20 is a specification document, not an organization with a registered location.
Start Year 2024
Stack Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) for encoding; no single reference-implementation language — the specification is implementation-neutral, though its flagship implementations (Geo Genesis, Hypergraph) are TypeScript/JavaScript.
Funding Not itself funded — a public specification. Its stewarding ecosystem (The Graph) is VC-backed with a live token (GRT); see Capture Risk Assessment.
Last Investigated Sep 14, 2026

Topology view

This tool in the centre and the things it is directly related to. Each line names the kind of relationship.

Topology view: GRC-20This tool in the centre and the things it is directly related to. Each line names the kind of relationship.GRC-20Geo Genesis (Basis for, Protocol spoken by, Stores in)Geo GenesisHypergraph (Basis for, Hosts, Interoperates with, Protocol spoken by, Stores in)HypergraphRDF (Competes with, Conforms to)RDFInternet Engineering Task Force (Stewarded by)InternetEngineering…IPFS (Stores in)IPFS
  • Geo Genesis (Tool): Basis for, Protocol spoken by, Stores in
  • Hypergraph (Tool): Basis for, Hosts, Interoperates with, Protocol spoken by, Stores in
  • RDF (Tool): Competes with, Conforms to
  • Internet Engineering Task Force (Organization): Stewarded by
  • IPFS (Tool): Stores in

Open in Graph Explorer

Use Case Domains

Co-Creation & Knowledge Identity & Trust

Affordances

Provenance tracking Interoperable formats

Semantic & Data Protocol Attributes

Origins Knowledge Base / Ecosystem-SDK — created to give web3 applications a common, interoperable schema for structured knowledge, explicitly framed as filling a gap RDF/the semantic web left unaddressed for a decentralized, non-server-dependent web.
Database No native database — GRC-20 is a data model/encoding specification, not a storage system. Implementations choose their own storage (e.g. Geo Genesis anchors public Spaces on-chain with IPFS content-addressing; Hypergraph is local-first with P2P sync).
Query Language Not specified in the GIP — the specification defines the data model and encoding only, not a query interface. The Graph's own GraphQL/subgraph layer is the likely query surface for GRC-20 data in practice, but this is not confirmed as GRC-20-native in the sources reviewed.
Data Formats Entities/Attributes/Values as triples grouped into Spaces; Relations as property-graph edges; Types as schemas; six native value types (Text, Number, Checkbox, URL, Time, Point). Encoded via Protocol Buffers; IDs are 22-character Base58-encoded globally unique identifiers.
Collaborative Live Editing N/A — a data-model specification, not an editing product.
Rich Text Editing N/A — not applicable to a data-model specification.
Mobile Support N/A at the standard level — mobile support is a property of implementations (e.g. Geo Genesis), not the GRC-20 spec itself.
Web Support N/A at the standard level — see Mobile Support.
Native Apps N/A at the standard level — see Mobile Support.
Terms Free — CC0 public domain; no licensing terms or fees for using or implementing the standard.
Funds Not confirmed in the sources reviewed — no distinct grant/funding figure for the GIP itself.
Based On The Graph's existing indexing/subgraph infrastructure, named as the standard's home network; explicitly positioned as a web3-native alternative to RDF/the semantic web rather than an extension of it.
Governing Body - List
  • Internet Engineering Task Force
Semantic Web Compatibility N/A / explicitly not RDF-compatible by design — the GIP states plainly that "a new standard is necessary for web3" because RDF's URI-based identifiers presuppose server-hosted resolution, which GRC-20 was written to avoid. A deliberate divergence, not an oversight.
Protocol Maturity / Standardization Graph Improvement Proposal (GIP) track, Draft status, v0.1.0 — not a W3C/IETF standard; governed by The Graph's own GIP repository/process rather than a neutral standards body.
Vocabulary / Ontology Type General-purpose — Types and Attributes are user/application-defined per Space, not a fixed domain vocabulary.
Usage Pattern Standalone data model, consumed via implementations — Geo Genesis (application layer) and Hypergraph (SDK/framework layer) are the two current adopters; the GIP states other applications may create/consume GRC-20 knowledge independently.

Relationships

How this tool connects to other tools and organizations, from relationships reviewed by the OpenHaven data steward. They describe how projects connect, not how good they are.

Conforms to
Stewarded by
  • Internet Engineering Task Force
Stores in
Competes with
Interoperates with
Basis for
Hosts
Protocol spoken by