$P^2$GNN: Two Prototype Sets to boost GNN Performance
Abstract
Message Passing Graph Neural Networks (MP-GNNs) have garnered attention for addressing various industry challenges, such as user recommendation and fraud detection. However, they face two major hurdles: (1) heavy reliance on local context, often lacking information about the global context or graph-level features, and (2) assumption of strong homophily among connected nodes, struggling with noisy local neighborhoods. To tackle these, we introduce $P^2$GNN, a plug-and-play technique leveraging prototypes to optimize message passing, enhancing the performance of the base GNN model. Our approach views the prototypes in two ways: (1) as universally accessible neighbors for all nodes, enriching global context, and (2) aligning messages to clustered prototypes, offering a denoising effect. We demonstrate the extensibility of our proposed method to all message-passing GNNs and conduct extensive experiments across 18 datasets, including proprietary e-commerce datasets and open-source datasets, on node recommendation and node classification tasks. Results show that $P^2$GNN outperforms production models in e-commerce and achieves the top average rank on open-source datasets, establishing it as a leading approach. Qualitative analysis supports the value of global context and noise mitigation in the local neighborhood in enhancing performance.
Benchmark Results
Tested on 5 datasets 14 baseline values reported too low
Tables show presented results in global context (best 3 papers + GCN + MLP).
Heterophilic Graphs
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P^2GNN | 0.9672
±0.0147 | This paper |
| 2 | DoG | 0.9660
±0.0210 | |
| 3 | GPF-plus | 0.9583
±0.0419 | |
| 5 | ACM-GCN | 0.9557
±0.0360 | prev best: Diffusion on Graph: Augmentation of Graph Structure for Node Classification (TMLR 2025) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 7 | VR-GNN | 0.9486
±0.0189 | This paper |
| 22 | BernNet | 0.9328
±0.0148 best reported | best at pub: A Quasi-Wasserstein Loss for Learning Graph Neural Networks (WWW 2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 28 | GPRGNN | 0.9295
±0.0131 best reported | best at pub: GrokFormer: Graph Fourier Kolmogorov-Arnold Transformers (ICML 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 34 | MLP | 0.9230
±0.0070 best reported | best at pub: Design your own universe: a physics-informed agnostic method for enhancing graph neural networks (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 39 | GGCN | 0.9213
±0.0305 best reported | best at pub: Graph Wave Networks (WWW 2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 40 | H2GCN | 0.9189
±0.0393 best reported | best at pub: GrokFormer: Graph Fourier Kolmogorov-Arnold Transformers (ICML 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 53 | GraphSAGE | 0.9000
±0.0365 | |
| 61 | FAGCN | 0.8961
±0.0152 best reported | best at pub: Node-oriented Spectral Filtering for Graph Neural Networks (2022) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 70 | GCNII | 0.8918
±0.0443 best reported | best at pub: Piecewise Constant Spectral Graph Neural Network (TMLR 2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 141 | GloGNN | 0.8524
±0.0490 | prev best: Finding Global Homophily in Graph Neural Networks When Meeting Heterophily (ICML 2022) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 183 | Snowball-2 | 0.8311
±0.0320 | This paper |
| 184 | Snowball-3 | 0.8311
±0.0320 | This paper |
| 211 | GAT | 0.8162
±0.0645 best reported | best at pub: Equivariance Everywhere All At Once: A Recipe for Graph Foundation Models (2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 221 | SGC-2 | 0.8131
±0.0330 | This paper |
| 235 | GCN + JK | 0.8066
±0.0191 | |
| 317 | GAT+JK | 0.7541
±0.0718 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P^2GNN | 0.9541
±0.0272 | This paper |
| 2 | ACM-GCN | 0.9480
±0.0380 best reported | best at pub: Heterophily-informed Message Passing (TMLR 2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 3 | RF-GCN | 0.9429 | |
| 13 | VR-GNN | 0.9270
±0.0270 | This paper |
| 15 | GGCN | 0.9230
±0.0367 | prev best: Understanding convolution on graphs via energies (TMLR 2022) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 17 | BernNet | 0.9213
±0.0164 | This paper |
| 22 | GPRGNN | 0.9157
±0.0196 best reported | best at pub: Simplified PCNet with Robustness (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 24 | MLP | 0.9136
±0.0070 best reported | best at pub: Node-oriented Spectral Filtering for Graph Neural Networks (2022) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 35 | GCNII | 0.8918
±0.0396 | prev best: Bayesian Neighborhood Adaptation for Graph Neural Networks (TMLR 2025) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 38 | FAGCN | 0.8852
±0.0133 best reported | best at pub: Node-oriented Spectral Filtering for Graph Neural Networks (2022) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 68 | H2GCN | 0.8623
±0.0471 | prev best: Heterophily-informed Message Passing (TMLR 2025) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 74 | GloGNN | 0.8595
±0.0510 best reported | best at pub: GPNet: Simplifying Graph Neural Networks via Multi-channel Geometric Polynomials (2022) best today: Aggregation-aware MLP: An Unsupervised Approach for Graph Message-passing (2025) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 134 | Snowball-3 | 0.8295
±0.0210 | This paper |
| 138 | SAGE | 0.8269 | |
| 141 | Snowball-2 | 0.8262
±0.0234 | This paper |
| 158 | GAT | 0.8190
±0.0540 best reported | best at pub: Restructuring Graphs for Higher Homophily via Adaptive Spectral Clustering (AAAI 2022) |
| 242 | GAT+JK | 0.7443
±0.1024 | This paper |
| 262 | SGC-2 | 0.7262
±0.0992 | This paper |
| 316 | GCN + JK | 0.6656
±0.1382 | prev best: From Node Interaction to Hop Interaction: New Effective and Scalable Graph Learning Paradigm (2022) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DiGGR | 0.4535
±0.0353 | |
| 2 | TRIGON | 0.4402
±0.0028 | |
| 3 | DoG | 0.4320
±0.0120 | |
| 5 | P^2GNN | 0.4305
±0.0134 | This paper |
| 14 | VR-GNN | 0.4216
±0.0042 | This paper |
| 16 | ACM-GCN | 0.4198
±0.0089 | prev best: Diffusion on Graph: Augmentation of Graph Structure for Node Classification (TMLR 2025) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 21 | BernNet | 0.4179
±0.0101 | This paper |
| 38 | GCNII | 0.4082
±0.0179 | prev best: Feature Expansion for Graph Neural Networks (ICML 2023) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 42 | MLP | 0.4026
±0.0108 best reported | best at pub: Heterophily-Aware Graph Attention Network (2023) |
| 52 | GPRGNN | 0.3992
±0.0067 best reported | best at pub: LON-GNN: Spectral GNNs with Learnable Orthonormal Basis (2023) best today: GrokFormer: Graph Fourier Kolmogorov-Arnold Transformers (ICML 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 56 | FAGCN | 0.3970 best reported | best at pub: Beyond Low-frequency Information in Graph Convolutional Networks (AAAI 2021) |
| 58 | GloGNN | 0.3959
±0.0029 best reported | best at pub: SignGT: Signed Attention-based Graph Transformer for Graph Representation Learning (2023) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 62 | GGCN | 0.3929
±0.0048 | prev best: Feature Transportation Improves Graph Neural Networks (AAAI 2023) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 68 | GraphSAGE | 0.3899
±0.0085 | |
| 71 | H2GCN | 0.3885
±0.0117 | Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 182 | GAT | 0.3605
±0.0035 best reported | best at pub: Hierarchical Graph Transformer with Adaptive Node Sampling (NeurIPS 2022) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 186 | Snowball-3 | 0.3600
±0.0136 | This paper |
| 187 | Snowball-2 | 0.3597
±0.0066 | This paper |
| 217 | GAT+JK | 0.3541
±0.0097 | This paper |
| 260 | GCN + JK | 0.3418
±0.0085 best reported | best at pub: From Node Interaction to Hop Interaction: New Effective and Scalable Graph Learning Paradigm (2022) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 377 | SGC-2 | 0.2881
±0.0111 | This paper |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hetero-S (GAT 8-layer) | 0.8693 | |
| 2 | Dir-GNN+CNA | 0.8586
±0.0180 | |
| 3 | GAT | 0.8560 best reported | best at pub: The Heterophilic Snowflake Hypothesis: Training and Empowering GNNs for Heterophilic Graphs (KDD 2024) |
| 28 | ACM-GCN | 0.7476
±0.0220 best reported | best at pub: Directed Homophily-Aware Graph Neural Network (2025) |
| 45 | GloGNN | 0.7133
±0.0242 | Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 46 | VR-GNN | 0.7121
±0.0117 | This paper |
| 48 | GGCN | 0.7114
±0.0184 best reported | best at pub: GPNet: Simplifying Graph Neural Networks via Multi-channel Geometric Polynomials (2022) best today: Scalable Graph Compressed Convolutions (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 52 | GCN | 0.7033 | |
| 56 | P^2GNN | 0.6987
±0.0163 | This paper |
| 66 | BernNet | 0.6829
±0.0158 | This paper |
| 68 | GAT+JK | 0.6814
±0.0118 | This paper |
| 72 | GPRGNN | 0.6748
±0.0040 | prev best: LON-GNN: Spectral GNNs with Learnable Orthonormal Basis (2023) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 83 | Snowball-3 | 0.6549
±0.0164 | This paper |
| 94 | Snowball-2 | 0.6499
±0.0239 | This paper |
| 96 | GCN + JK | 0.6468
±0.0285 | prev best: From Node Interaction to Hop Interaction: New Effective and Scalable Graph Learning Paradigm (2022) Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 103 | GCNII | 0.6386
±0.0304 best reported | best at pub: GPNet: Simplifying Graph Neural Networks via Multi-channel Geometric Polynomials (2022) best today: Scalable Graph Compressed Convolutions (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 107 | FAGCN | 0.6344
±0.0205 best reported | best at pub: Beyond Smoothing: Unsupervised Graph Representation Learning with Edge Heterophily Discriminating (AAAI 2022) |
| 112 | SGC-2 | 0.6267
±0.0241 | This paper |
| 133 | H2GCN | 0.6030
±0.0231 best reported | best at pub: Optimization-Induced Graph Implicit Nonlinear Diffusion (ICML 2022) |
| 169 | MLP | 0.5429 best reported | best at pub: Understanding Heterophily for Graph Neural Networks (ICML 2024) |
| # | Model | Accuracy ↑ | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | IBG-NN | 0.7763
±0.0179 | |
| 2 | Dir-GNN+CNA | 0.7747
±0.0128 | |
| 3 | DHGNN | 0.7684
±0.0161 | |
| 19 | GloGNN | 0.7121
±0.0184 best reported | best at pub: Directed Homophily-Aware Graph Neural Network (2025) |
| 25 | ACM-GCN | 0.6740
±0.0221 best reported | best at pub: Directed Homophily-Aware Graph Neural Network (2025) |
| 39 | H2GCN | 0.6190
±0.0140 best reported | best at pub: Efficient Learning on Large Graphs using a Densifying Regularity Lemma (2025) |
| 46 | GCN | 0.6067 | |
| 59 | VR-GNN | 0.5750
±0.0118 | This paper |
| 64 | P^2GNN | 0.5647
±0.0136 | This paper |
| 67 | GAT | 0.5630
±0.0220 best reported | best at pub: Restructuring Graphs for Higher Homophily via Adaptive Spectral Clustering (AAAI 2022) |
| 69 | GGCN | 0.5567
±0.0187 | Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
| 76 | GPRGNN | 0.5435
±0.0087 best reported | best at pub: Directed Homophily-Aware Graph Neural Network (2025) |
| 78 | GCN + JK | 0.5340
±0.0190 | |
| 82 | GAT+JK | 0.5228
±0.0361 | This paper |
| 86 | BernNet | 0.5139
±0.0092 best reported | best at pub: Optimizing Polynomial Graph Filters: A Novel Adaptive Krylov Subspace Approach (WWW 2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 97 | Snowball-3 | 0.4825
±0.0094 | This paper |
| 99 | Snowball-2 | 0.4788
±0.0123 | This paper |
| 139 | FAGCN | 0.4259
±0.0069 best reported | best at pub: Gradient Gating for Deep Multi-Rate Learning on Graphs (ICLR 2022) best today: Graph Neural Reaction Diffusion Models Submitted to the editors June 2023. Accepted in March 2024. (2024) Difference within reported uncertainty; not counted as underperformance. |
| 152 | SGC-2 | 0.4125
±0.0140 | This paper |
| 172 | MLP | 0.3930
±0.0079 best reported | best at pub: Understanding Heterophily for Graph Neural Networks (ICML 2024) |
| 176 | GCNII | 0.3881
±0.0197 | Improvement within reported uncertainty; not highlighted. |
