Pendulum To Use Acurast’s Trustless Oracles
Pendulum and Acurast are collaborating to bring trustless and verifiable price feeds to Pendulum (and its canary chain, Amplitude) through Acurast.
Acurast has reimagined the concept of bringing off-chain data on-chain, creating a platform where developers can access real world data within their applications through a streamlined marketplace with the advantages of trusted execution environments.
Why are trustless and verifiable price feeds important?
Many DeFi projects have to rely on off-chain data to get access to, for example, price feeds for their applications. Often they have to resort to a solution they either build on their own or put their trust in rather centralized, intransparent oracles. Often these oracles are black boxes, which return results without the consumer of the feed being able to independently verify that the expected code was actually executed to produce that result.
Putting trust in a small set of opaque entities is not just counterintuitive in a decentralized ecosystem but also opens up an attack vector: imagine a compromised oracle delivering false price feeds, which an attacker could exploit at the application-level by buying artificially cheap assets and reselling at a higher price.
The Acurast solution: show, don’t tell
Acurast has built a solution that does not require trust but one that is verifiable and secured through technology and cryptography — just the way Web3 intended.
With Acurast, off-chain data, let us say, a price feed is fetched like so:
- A developer writes a price fetching script (a “job”)
- The job is executed by a so-called Data Transmitter in a Trusted Execution Environment (“TEE”)
- The result of running the job is then brought to the desired destination of the developer (for example, through the Acurast Pallet to the Pendulum chain… more about that later)
- The on-chain output is now verifiable by anyone. It’s an open system that enables everyone to become a Transmitter and participate.
All code runs in the Acurast Trusted Virtual Machine, enabling any use case to be brought on-chain. Through the Acurast Protocol, an upcoming parachain in the DotSama ecosystem, a marketplace is created where developers and the data transmitters agree on a reward for the transmitter on the job defined by the developers.
Now it’s possible for any price feed consumer to verify that a specific script has actually been executed to produce the result data. In short, no more finger-crossing, when fetching price feeds.
Getting fiat prices on Pendulum
Our goal at Pendulum is to unleash the full potential of stablecoins and give developers all the tools they need to develop the next generation of DeFi-fiat applications. Getting accurate, secure, and variable price feeds on-chain is absolutely key to this.
Acurast’s platform provides two advantages:
- Verifiable oracles: by having transparent, open oracle services, it is possible to mitigate some of the security risks of blackbox data feed providers.
- Flexible oracles: Acurast’s flexible platform allows Pendulum to write feed-specific price fetching jobs and run them according to the agreements with the Data Transmitters — if a certain application requires faster price feeds or special feed update rules, they can be adjusted directly.
An Example: fetching from the Binance API
A simple example of a customized fetching mechanism is the following code sample which simply retrieves the current BNB-BTC price:
The script queries the Binance API and then operates on it (in this case simply logs it) and then sends a signed (thus verifiable) value to an oracle. From there, an Event will be emitted from the transmitter, which allows the Acurast Pallet on Pendulum to retrieve the data, verify its integrity, and use it on-chain.
The script is then uploaded to an Acurast Job by posting it in the dedicated Acurast Marketplace, defining parameters such as the rewards for executing the script, timing, and update triggers. This will, in turn, be matched to one or more Acurast Transmitters, which will execute the job, when necessary. Once executed, the job will return data to the Pallet, where a data hash will be committed to the target blockchain.
The Acurast-Pendulum prototype
The first step of integration is a joint prototype which will integrate the Acurast pallet on Foucoco (Pendulum’s Rococo testnet). The goal is to allow the creation of trustless, custom-made, and verifiable oracles that fetch both crypto and fiat prices.
[A simplified diagram of the prototype]
As part of the prototype, Pendulum is planning to write a suite of jobs in a collaboration with the community and financial institutions that will expand on the existing fiat price oracles currently available.
Following the release of the prototype, we want to publicly publish both our learning and our custom-built price jobs, so the entire Polkadot community can benefit. The next step is then to roll out on Amplitude and Pendulum.
The future of oracles
Oracles are one of the most critical infrastructure pieces in the crypto ecosystem, and one that deserves much attention. With Acurast approach, which allows scripts to execute in a verifiable manner, oracles are no longer necessarily opaque services that data consumers simply have to trust without any recourse to independent verification. With this step, the entire industry can make a great leap forward towards increased trustlessness.
Erasmus Hagen, Head of Product at Pendulum:
“Acurast is proposing an elegant solution to the challenge of ‘black box’ oracles, and we’re very excited to work together with them — both to develop solutions for our specific use case, but also to enable the entire Polkadot ecosystem to migrate to the next generation of oracles.”
Pascal Brun, Acurast Co-Founder:
“We are very excited for this collaboration with Pendulum as it marks the first integration of Acurast and the Acurast Pallet in the Dotsama ecosystem. This not only helps Acurast to further improve but also gives Pendulum access to trustless price feeds.”
About Acurast
The Next Wave of Web3 is here. A real world data source built with innovation, ingenuity, and integrity. Acurast transforms the delivery of data with a multi-chain first application ecosystem where communication is easy, effortless, and accessible. Let’s build… together.
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About Pendulum
Building the missing link between fiat and DeFi through a fiat-optimized smart contract blockchain based on Polkadot’s Substrate. Allowing traditional finance fiat services to integrate with DeFi applications such as specialized forex AMMs, lending protocols, or yield farming opportunities. Developed by SatoshiPay.
Keep your eyes on the Pendulum!
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