Token Name Service: Your Decentralized Token Tracker on The Graph

Discover Token Name Service and their vision with Builders Office Hours #23.

TL;DR: Learn about Token Name Service and how it uses The Graph for its token registry.

The mission of the Graph Builders Office Hours is to support and empower developers, teams, and protocols actively building with The Graph protocol.

Sessions are hosted by developers working in The Graph ecosystem. Each session includes a live workshop and Q&A discussion.

🎤 Guest speaker: Kindnesss.eth

In this session, Kindnesss.eth gave an overview of TKN (Token Name Service) and how it uses The Graph for its token registry.

You can watch the entire recorded session on The Graph’s YouTube—check it out!

TKN overview

TKN is a name service protocol for allocating token symbols on chain. The protocol maintains accurate on-chain metadata and puts it in the hands of developers (TKN Whitepaper).

TKN’s vision is to query any asset on Earth using just one endpoint: The Graph and TKN.

Token data is currently fractured among many tools and ecosystems. Very few developers are able to incorporate the entire dataset into their interfaces, and aggregating the entire industry or all the tokens in a single ecosystem is grueling.

TKN intends to expose it all in a subgraph.

TKN benefits

• Token accuracy is assured, and users are safe.
• You can move all data through a single beautiful, composable subgraph, indexed by multiple independent indexers in a decentralized way.

TKN token tracker

The decentralized token tracker consumes all of the token data on chain. You can perform the following functions:

1. Search
2. Portfolio tracking
3. Detail view
4. Most importantly, you can submit edit submissions to the TKN dataset

💡 TKN also has an iOS app.

TKN is essentially a decentralized token tracker running on The Graph.

• Kindnesss.eth outlined the TKN security model:

• They want to allow a data submission workflow but also allow users to stake and verify the authenticity of this dataset, which will later be exposed over the subgraph.
• He shared their subgraph.
• TKN is entirely on chain.
• Blockscout has integrated TKN’s data into its Explorer, and there are a lot more projects in the queue.
• They consider The Graph and its model to be vastly superior to the existing centralized APIs in offering access to the TKN data due to its decentralized nature and protocol security.

Q&A

Question:

How is token data added as a data point? Is there a submission process, or are all ERC-20s indexed, and then a ticker is assigned? How do you ensure spoof tokens are not added?

Answer:

The vision for TKN is to create a single global token namespace. The main feature of a namespace is that only a single entity can control a single name. So, there can only be one token with USDC.

💡 This article answers questions like:
- What is Token Name Service (TKN)?
- What tasks does the TKN token tracker allow you to do?