An Introduction to the DIA DAO — Accounting for Oracles of the Past and Present
DIA accounts for oracles of the past and the present to transparently and efficiently provide reliable, accurate data for Web3 through an open-source ecosystem
Oracles of the Past
In all cultures, certain individuals were believed to be chosen by God to relay matters of great importance (i.e., divine actionable information). Armies refused to leave on skirmishes without them, kings halted plans in wait of their counsel, and nations collectively and readily adopted practices based on their proclivities.
These respected and influential personalities were known by many titles in various regions of the world. In Greece, however, they were called oracles during the Golden Age. Many a time, nations’ blind faith in oracles, in tandem with the freedom of rulers and counsels to derive their own interpretation of the “information” received (which was usually conveyed in riddles and then deciphered, interpreted, and acted upon without any guidance or methodology), enabled powerful men to coerce people into warmongering.
Those with influence wished only to expand their domain under the guise of prosperity, but the masses continued to fall into this trap heedlessly. It was not until the advent of the technologies of trust (e.g., printing press, the World Wide Web, Blockchain) and globalization (i.e., migration, communication, and human rights) that humanity as a whole broke free from the clutches of the aristocracy.
As monarchy was forced to give way to democracy, mankind did lose the explanatory power behind the language of fate and fortune used by oracles of the past, eventually replacing it with research and consensus. Still, the innate tendency to create kingdoms persists to this day, evident by the walled gardens of Web 2.0 and the closed digital universes of Web 3.0, each having a single source of truth that is shared solely amongst their various communities.
Oracles of the Future
History validates that human beings have always been eager to source high-quality information, especially in terms of what the world will look like in the future, regardless of the cost. Yet, lack of transparency, misinterpretation, and disinformation are issues that remain unresolved or improperly addressed. Now, standing at the brink of the next industrial revolution that just won’t commence, the trust layer built on top of the Internet to act as our savior is reliant on smart contracts that are unable to source information below it.
The data created in the trust layer is deterministic (i.e., digital facts known to be true 100%) and thus easily accessible by any smart contract. Yet, it is the data present outside the distributed ledger technology (aka the trust layer) that cannot be sourced directly, introducing the “oracle problem.”
With billions of dollars currently locked in the DeFi Space, it is neither academic nor professional to rely on a single source of information. Hence, these new oracles must transparently interlink authentic sources residing outside the trust layer with smart contracts operating the trust layer, devoid of the riddles and indistinctness of the “data” generally disseminated by seers in the past.
DIA
Unlike other players in the market, DIA takes into account the history of mankind and all its oracles and blockchains. It came into existence with the understanding that developers need to affirm where the data comes from and the methodology behind it to build optimal financial instruments.
For example, despite the magnitude of its size, the information related to the financial world in the DeFi space is acquired via decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that can be quite credible but still merely a representation of a single source.
In contrast, the provision of DIA is user generated, and this approach is consistent with what is expected in the future. It is not hard to fathom that users will demand DApps to only utilize transparent oracles in the future, and DIA is well-prepared to cater to this ever-growing need.
The Open-Source Platform
DIA achieves transparency, accuracy, and verifiability through an interplay of open contributors, governors, and off-chain computation.
1) Contributors: Scrapers (extractors of data into useable formats) built by an open community of developers connect the DIA platform with new data sources
2) Governors/Validators: Platform improvement is governed by the community of token holders
3) Off-chain computation: To ensure the impeccability of the resulting data, the imported raw data is processed in accordance with transparent methodologies
Through this approach, the platform is currently able to engage multiple on- and off-chain sources to provide thousands of trade-level data points on the DIA platform. After being shipped through dedicated oracle smart contracts or application programming interfaces (APIs; functions allowing communication between software components via specific protocols), developers on 25+ L1 and L2 blockchains are able to access it.
DIA: The Way of the DAO
According to Paul Claudius, the co-founder of DIA DAO, the importance of decentralization became more evident when people started requesting data immediately after DIA’s inception.
“The reason they were asking was that you really need to know the methodology for a lot of use cases.” Paul Claudius
DIA, in particular, is decentralized on two levels — the product level and the governance level. As a Swiss association, it comprises the most perfect legal structure that a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) can have because banks in Switzerland own exchanges as they want to have a say in how the space evolves and develops while overseeing the nature of the services provided. Besides, regulators in the traditional finance space demand more than one verifiable data source for products. This compatibility and operationality place DIA as the best possible candidate to connect the traditional world with the realm of decentralization.
Notably, the founders of DIA were quick to identify that a provider was missing in the crypto digital asset space that was built and governed by the community; hence, they permitted the DIA governance token holders to do just that.
That is why DIA is a DAO both legally and technologically. Such a reliance on the community imbues transparency in the processes of DIA DAO. Transparency is embedded by definition because you define what you need and you receive key transparency on what you get, which is validated and approved and then made accessible. Efficiency is another key advantage because an organization might not be able to scale as fast as required by the modern market despite the immensity of its size.
“I often use the example of Wikipedia compared to Encyclopedia Britannica. No matter how smart your writers are, they would never be able to compete with an open system where the world can provide data and review and update it.” Paul Claudius
With a myriad of partnerships and collaborations across Web3, a massive community of developers has joined the cause since it first rolled out in 2017. These developers are here to stay because they wish to imbue economic incentives of various kinds in their tokens by using DIA DAO’s proof of use.
Final Remarks
Mankind must move forward from the oracles and walled gardens of the past to the oracles and interoperable systems of the future. We cannot afford oracles to limit the potential of communities any longer; instead, they should be held responsible for their wellbeing and success, which is only achievable through empowerment. As research dictates that true empowerment can only be through knowledge acquisition and systematic implementation, accessibility to reliable and accurate data in a transparent and efficient way through an open-source ecosystem is the most ideal way forward for elevating the entirety of Web3.
Interested in learning more, find the documentation here or head on over to Discord to become a contributor. Also, be sure to check out their Twitter for live updates and progress. I’ll be waiting for you there.
