Move calls to GraphQL API to DB

[pattruong]

Overview

• currently we make calls to our Hasura client in order to verify users or anything involving the DB
• While fine, this adds an extra intermediary when we can go straight to the DB (faster & skips any potential interruptions due to API layer)
• reduces load on our API as well

Research findings

• Most Hasura examples feature just making queries in API. This is fine for the most part
• Hasura can scale to a lot of concurrent calls fine
• Direct DB calls put the scaling burden on us (not sure how difficult this actually is - could be trivial)
• Not high priority