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What are Oracles? The Chinese meaning of Oracle is prophet, prophet. The old lady who plays the role of prophet in the movie The Matrix is called Oracle. One of the definitions of an oracle is a person or thing that has absolute authority or can provide guidance in some respect. As an example, in a small town, there is a man who walks his dog at 9 a.m. every morning, rain or shine. Gradually, the townspeople judged the time based on whether the man was walking his dog. If you see him walking his dog on the street, it must be 9:00 in the morning. So is he a reliable prophet? uncertain. If he gets sick, the dog dies, or there is a torrential rain, it could throw off his 9 a.m. dog walk, which means hes not a reliable predictor. source of prophet There are many methods of divination, but the essence is to try to predict the future. Prophets on the Blockchain - Oracles Blockchain technology is a powerful tool for us to track behavior on the chain, but what if we want to bring data off the chain to the chain? For example, how do we let the blockchain know the price of a certain token, the color of the sky, or whether Trump will be re-elected in the US presidential election. In a situation like this, the blockchain needs a reliable source of information—an oracle. You may be a little confused, why does the blockchain need to know information such as token prices? Information such as token prices does not exist naturally on the chain, and this information is critical to the operation of smart contracts on the chain. For example, a smart contract that handles lending needs to determine the borrowers loanable amount based on the latest token price obtained. Congratulations, you got the point! What sources of information do you consider reliable? Many people will answer: centralized information sources outside the chain. And centralization is exactly the problem, centralization means a single point of risk, and experience tells us that it is very difficult to maintain long-term reliability and accuracy of centralized information sources. How to solve the oracle problem? Several teams are now working on a suitable solution. Another solution is Chainlink, which aims to create a network of distributed oracles. This network allows smart contracts to access off-chain resources, such as information on other blockchains or standard data sources like website APIs. For example, if there is a blockchain that records stock market data, then other blockchains can obtain stock market data through the oracle service provided by Chainlink. Security and reliability of the oracle? Although the oracle machine can provide data, how to ensure the reliability and accuracy of the data is still a challenge. Synthetixs oracle made a misquote once, quoting 1,000 times the normal price in Korean Won. A trading bot on the platform detected the error and arbitraged it, earning a 1,000-fold gain, more than $1 billion in an hour. Coincidentally, the bZx protocol also experienced abnormal quotations from oracle machines. The bZx protocol allows users to conduct margin transactions through Fulcrum. This transaction process is not complicated, but Fulcrum needs the data provided by the oracle machine for pricing, so it chose Kyber, a decentralized trading platform. As a trading platform, Kyber should have provided accurate real-time prices for Fulcrum, but compared with centralized trading platforms, Kybers trading volume is still relatively small and liquidity is insufficient. And this point was exploited by a user and profited from it. secondary title The future of oracles Although prophets are often seen in historical stories, the oracle machine on the blockchain has only appeared in peoples field of vision for a short time, and we dont know enough about it. The existing oracle mechanism still needs to be improved. After the market has learned every lesson of real money, I believe that the future oracle will be more solid and reliable.secondary title
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The future of oracles
