Umbrella Network Goes LIVE on Solana Mainnet: What It Means

Continuing its relentless march towards offering decentralized oracle data across the widest possible spectrum of dApps, Umbrella Network announced this week we’re now live on the Solana Mainnet. Let’s take a deeper dive into why this matters for developers.

TL;DR

• Umbrella Network is now live on the Solana Mainnet — the 6th Blockchain network to be natively supported by us in addition to Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Avalanche
• This mainnet launch is Umbrella Network’s first mainnet launch on a non-EVM-Compatible chain
• This will enable the dApps on Solana, one of the fastest-growing layer 1 ecosystems of 2021–22, to access and receive accurate and decentralized data directly in their smart contracts
• With over 3800+ supported data pairs, our decentralized oracle, the largest in the world by transaction volume, now brings our hallmark speed, accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and scalability to Solana dApps

Decentralized applications on the blockchain are smart contracts that need to receive data to be ‘smart’ (act as programmed). Since blockchains (and by extension smart contracts) are closed systems, how, what, and where they get their data from becomes instrumental in determining whether the aforementioned dApps are decentralized or not.

While blockchains by virtue of being a ledger of on-chain transactions are limited in scope and do not require oracles (decentralized or otherwise), smart contract applications (commonly referred to as dApps) require external data to function — making data oracles an essential component. To ensure that these smart contracts can receive data irrespective of the blockchain they’re on, Umbrella Network’s decentralized oracles are launched on all these different Blockchain mainnets.

The Oracle Conundrum

If one of the goals of decentralization is disintermediation then one might ask — why not directly receive data from the source APIs?

That is exactly how things have largely been done up until now — and crippling hacks to the tune of billions of dollars have rendered many a dApp dead in the water. Man in the middle attacks is the name of that game and decentralized oracles solve this problem.

By implementing a community-driven process of fetching and committing data on the Blockchain, decentralized oracles essentially are merely smart contracts on the Blockchain — not intermediaries as in the pejorative sense.

What Does Solana Have to Do With Any of This?

The Solana Blockchain (technically a decentralized ledger technology) is one of the fastest-growing networks with one of the lowest transaction fees and one of the fastest times to transaction finality. With the price of the underlying currency, SOL, exploding in late 2021–22, it has emerged as one of the favorite non-EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) networks for DeFi dApps, NFTs, and tokens.

These DeFi dApps need to receive data from external sources (such as other Blockchain networks, websites, DEXs, or a combination of these). Those dApps backed by, let’s say VC money would be able to get data from premium (paid) sources and become more accurate (relatively) than bootstrapped dApps that rely on free sources like coinmarketcap, etc. This creates an uneven playing field — an anathema for decentralization.

The same can be said of marketplaces, blockchain-based games, and the upcoming NFTFi applications.

Umbrella Network positions itself as the decentralized equivalent of an equalizing force, the fruits of which can be consumed by any and all dApps.

How you ask?

Our data comes in two flavors — FCD (First-Class Data) which is always available on-chain and includes the most popular trading pairs’ data. The other kind is L2D (Layer-2 Data) which includes thousands of data points that are not covered by other decentralized oracles. Umbrella is able to batch-write large volumes of data to a blockchain in a single transaction, meaning we can provide much more complex data feeds and solutions by performing a large chunk of it off-chain.

Moreover, running an Umbrella Network validator node is cheaper AND cheaper to operate than every other decentralized oracle out there.

Now, combine the above two with the fact that our data can be freely sourced by dApps, there is not one reason to justify using centralized sources as data feeds. Our community validators get data from both premium and free sources, effectively bringing dApps on an even keel when it comes to data availability.

Going a step further on decentralization, our community validators also source data from popular DEXs such as Uniswap and Pancakeswap, making our data feeds more accurate. Our architecture enables data to be refreshed every minute — a tall feat considering that every other oracle updates data only once a day.

The final piece is the overall upgrade to the Umbrella Network codebase which has now been made agnostic of the Ethereum-centric EVM libraries and hence less dependent on them. This would also enable us to launch faster on other Non-EVM chains such as Cardano.

Thus, with these differentiators, Umbrella Network becomes the responsible choice for dApps but, there is a lingering question.

While a vast majority of Blockchain networks are EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible, a growing minority are not. Solana, Cardano, and a few Polkadot parachains are the biggest non-EVM chains that forego the comfort of the EVM for eliminating the legacy frameworks.

What this implies for dApps is a dichotomous choice:

• Stay on an EVM chain and retain the ability to migrate/bridge to other compatible EVM chains as needed
• Build on a non-EVM chain such as Solana and leverage its speed and cost benefits

By integrating our decentralized oracle into the Solana Mainnet, Umbrella Network ensures that dApps are not forced to build on an EVM chain for the sole reason that sourcing decentralized data is impossible/too costly on Solana. We want to ensure that dApps choose the network that best suits their needs without being constrained by technology.

Just as NFTs are increasingly finding it more conducive to launch on Solana (even OpenSea rolled out support for Solana NFTs, albeit to a smaller audience for now), the writing is clear on the wall — Ethereum is huge but no longer the hegemon, and that opens the doors for other networks such as Terra (which is growing up fast in the DeFi space).

Whatever the structure of the blockchain network might be, they’re always going to be closed systems (for privacy and security functions) that will need data from outside sources, and those needs will be met by Umbrella Network’s 3800+ data pairs.

This is why our oracle network’s Solana mainnet launch is not just a huge deal for us but for DeFi in general.

As we work to erase the data insufficiency problem for all dApps (even up-and-coming ones without massive budgets) by offering superior data feeds for free, our first launch on a non-EVM chain extends our data offerings to those projects that are pioneering beyond the safety nets of the EVM.

About Solana

Solana is a global state machine and the world’s most performant blockchain. It gives developers the confidence to build for the long term by delivering predictable scaling without compromising security or composability. Solana’s performance is driven by a single global state, which is capable of processing tens of thousands of smart contracts at once, and by Proof of History, a distributed clock that unlocks low-latency, sub-second finality across the global state. To learn more, please visit https://solana.com.

About Umbrella Network

Umbrella Network is a scalable, decentralized, and community-owned oracle that utilizes Layer 2 technology to integrate real-time data into smart contracts for accurate and timely reports. Umbrella Network brings the world’s data to blockchains to enable DeFi applications to perform at the optimum level regarding precise information dissemination. It believes a decentralized oracle is paramount to creating a truly decentralized financial space.

Follow Umbrella Network on:

Telegram| Twitter | Announcements | Website | Governance

If you’re interested in becoming an Umbrella Network Partner, sign up here.

To add your token as FCD or L2D, click here