The technology which is indeed a breakthrough for the decentralization sphere. Smart-contracts — immutable, transparent code called right from the blockchain.
But, unfortunately, range of their utility is still pretty limited. So, why’s that?
We think that most, if not all troubles are caused by inability of smart contracts to interact with the data from off-chain sources in its magnificent diversity. The blockchain is a closed system by itself and is caged by its own data types without any internal gateways to the outer world.
This crucial issue brings the world of decentralization to a very unpleasant state, causing several serious problems.
First of them and the main one is a low level of practical use-cases and business implementation. Without any ability to infuse the smart-contract logical elements with the off-chain data the range of real use cases is critically small. The market of the decentralized applications is staying on a very beginning level causing many projects become useless or centralized.
What’s more, even if you don’t really want to build a massive trustless system, it will be very hard to make the most usual things such as betting or even service agreement in a pure trustless way, because smart-contract will never know about the subject of bet or a progress of service being done. But, can we help it get this task done?
Here is where the tech community needs to put an effort to. Blockchain is in a huge need of a complete toolbox to get the real power.
And one of the main tools in this box is the oracle (in this particular case the mediator between blockchain and data from the outside world) purpose of which is the translation and transfer of any kind of off-chain data to the smart-contract directly.
But, here is a paradox for you to think about: the oracle breaks the trust by being a centralized entity by its own meaning. Modification of the decentralization to harm it or maybe not? In the modern conditions this is the only type of solution existing. But, this is the step which needs to be passed for the blockchain technology to rise to the higher level.
Unfortunately, this is not the only obstacle on the way. Another one is the lack of the flexibility in the modern oracle systems. Data provided is usually limited by several types and several sources because every data-type of it needs to be delivered by a separate Oracle because of the processing issues.
This issues are the ones standing in the way of a new step for the blockchain and the decentralization itself. The community needs to understand that and go forward to overcoming that and push much forward afterwards to create that toolbox — the real full stack for a decentralization follower.
