I. Overview of oracle
Oracle ,In Greek mythology, an oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. In blockchain, an oracle connects on-chain and off-chain data and writes the real-world data to the chain.
It’s said that all transaction records on the blockchain are traceable, secure and transparent. Actually, blockchain is a closed system. Smart contracts based on the blockchain cannot obtain data directly from the outside and can only perform tasks in a closed and isolated environment. Oracle, on the other hand, is a set of innovative mechanisms that can input real-world data from outside into the chain and verify data authenticity by establishing a decentralized third-party proxy mechanism, thus ensuring the trustworthiness of the blockchain ecosystem. Therefore, oracle is considered as a bridge between decentralized protocols and external data. Its use cases are numerous as it is needed by all DApps that need to interact with data outside the chain.
II. Challenges for oracles
With the development DeFi ecosystem, the smart contract applications get ever advanced and enormous data is generated. Thus, the market value and user demand for oracles has soared. As an indispensable infrastructure of the blockchain ecosystem, oracles face the following challenges.
1. Insufficient decentralization: Most mainstream oracle tools are centralized. There are many connections between nodes, and even risks of centralized manipulation. That means nodes can easily do evil, tamper with the data, affect the quotations, and pose a threat to user data and asset security.
2. Slow interaction response speed: As the Ethereum Gas price is high and volatile, most oracles read and return the off-chain data after the data is requested, which is an asynchronous interaction process with a time interval of two blocks. That results in response lag and cannot meet the demand for speed and efficiency.
3. Incomplete and undiversified data: Some DeFi protocols in the market do not have advanced channels to obtain data, and thus the asset data is incomplete and undiversified. For example, the data of gold and stocks is not in the list.
III. DataLink Oracle
DataLink is a decentralized oracle network based on OKChain. It offers quotation nodes, stake mining, information verification, data call, and other modules. It can verify the authenticity of the off-chain data, safeguard the trusted interaction between smart contracts and the external world, and serve as the data portal of the decentralized ecosystem. As an important infrastructure in the DeFi ecosystem, oracle is applied in loan, insurance, derivatives, and IoT among other fields involving calls of big data.
Strengths of DataLink Oracle:
1. Security: DataLink quotation nodes submit data on the chain. Such data is transparent, verifiable, traceable and tamper-proof. Moreover, DataLink Oracle builds a node staking mechanism to ensure the consistency of rights and responsibilities and to increase the cost of nodes to do evil, thus ensuring data security and accuracy.
2. Decentralized: DataLink is a highly decentralized network, in which any member can participate in the election to become a quotation node. DataLink will invite all the members for the election. Elected nodes are not fixed as they will face competition and be disqualified if they become ineligible.
3. Timely response: DataLink performs data submission and aggregation on OKChain, which has a much higher TPS than Ethereum. DataLink can ensure high-frequency quotations in seconds, which well meets the user demand for timeliness.
4. Data diversity: Besides common on-chain asset data, information of gold, stocks and others is in the list, which meets user demand for diversified data.
5. Low cost and easy to use: The quotation nodes submit and aggregate asset data through OKChain, and the cost of Gas on OKChain is much lower than that of Ethereum, which means lower transaction costs. This improves the frequency of data extraction and makes data easy to use.
1. DataLink Oracle roles
a) Data provider and reward mechanism
The platform adopts a decentralized node quotation model, and the data providers are the quotation nodes. The first batch of quotation nodes are invited by DataLink from the OKChain ecosystem. Nodes are independent of each other and do not interfere with each other before, so that they can work together to write outside data parameters into the chain and maintain the development of the DataLink value ecosystem. DataLink will regularly conduct node review and election, and any individuals and organizations can participate in the node election under the prerequisite of holding a certain amount of DLOs. Elected nodes can submit data and obtain DLO rewards.
b) Data caller and calling mechanism
DataLink provides transparent asset data information to each account and smart contract with data requests. Data callers can request asset data services every day by staking 100 USD worth of OKT/DLO LP; the staked assets will be unlocked after 30 days, and the tokens for staking can be pre-deposited. Token staking can make the token deflationary and promote the growth of DLO value.
c) Validator and validation mechanism
When a quotation node provides asset data, other quotation nodes can question and challenge the data as a validator. The validator can verify the identified data using the DataLink validation calculation tool. If the arbiter confirms that the data is problematic, the validator can get part of the DLOs staked by the quotation node. After that, the validator is required to provide a new piece of data. If the validator fails the challenge, the DLOs staked by the validator will be distributed to the quotation node and the data arbiter according to certain proportions.
2. DataLink quotation nodes and operation mechanism
DataLink is a decentralized platform providing off-chain data, which is transported to on-chain smart contracts through oracles. DataLink governance token is DLO, and each quotation node can become an oracle by staking DLOs and then provide data services for users.
In the first stage, there are 7 quotation nodes. All participants in the OKChain ecosystem will be invited to compete to become a quotation node, and the participating nodes are independent and do not interfere with each other. Later on, the number of quotation nodes will increase to 13. Quotation nodes will be reviewed every 3 months. Data providers can compete to replace unqualified quotation nodes.
DataLink smart contract will automatically review the service records of the first batch of quotation nodes after 3 months, verify data authenticity and service performance. DataLink will disqualify nodes with poor reputation or low reliability, and provide a fair opportunity of competition for other participants. Any individual or institution can participate in the node election by staking 50,000 DLOs and get DLOs rewards upon each data submission if elected.
When a quotation node submits incorrect data, tampers with the information or has other breach of trust or evil behavior, DataLink will deduct a certain amount of its staked DLOs. 70% of the deducted DLO will be used to reward other quotations nodes, and 30% will be put into the mining pool for ecosystem construction.
3. DataLink DAO’s community governance model
DataLink adopts the community governance model of DAO, and the participating members are DLO holders. Users can maintain the project operation, make project decisions and promote the development of the project ecosystem by proposal and voting. Token holders can decide the direction of the project. Currently, DataLink’s early proposals are generally initiated by the operation team, and then voted by DLO holders. The proposals can be executed when the minimum execution conditions are met. The community governance model of DataLink DAO gives token holders the right to make decisions on the project, thus ensuring openness, transparency and fairness.
IV. DLO economic model
DataLink governance token DLO represents all value and equity of the platform and can be used and circulated in DataLink ecosystem. The issuance amount of DLOs is 10 million, which will be used for project promotion (1%), mining output (24%), quotation node rewards (70%), team incentives (4%) and liquidity pool creation (1%).
Token allocation ratio:
Token output and circulation mechanism:
Project promotion: 100,000 tokens will be used for airdrop for eligible DataLink users in the early stage.
Node staking: The participant needs to stake 50,000 DLOs to participate in the election to become a qualified node for data quotation.
Quotation node rewards: When the quotation node finish a quotation, it can get the mining reward of 1 DLO after the data information is confirmed to be authentic.
Data call: If data consumers request asset data service every day, they need to stake 100 USDT DLO/OKT LP worth of assets, which will be unlocked after 30 days. Pre-deposit is supported.
Team incentive: Team incentive mechanism is triggered when the following conditions are met: 1% will be unlocked when TVL (total locked value) reaches 100 million U; 1% will be unlocked when the token price rises 100 times; 1% will be unlocked when the project runs for 365 days; 1% will be unlocked when 10 million data calls are made.
Liquidity pool creation: Used for creating the initial liquidity pool of DLO.
Pool categories: single-token pool and LP pool. There are 4 pools: DLO single-token pool, DLO/USTD LP pool, DLO/OTK LP pool, and DLO/USDC LP pool.
DLOs represent all the value and equity of DataLink and are owned by all token-holding users. For the long-term development of OKChain ecosystem, the token allocation and circulation may be slightly adjusted according to the actual situation, and the adjustment result will be released via an announcement after it is confirmed by the DataLink DAO community.
V. Project roadmap
Q2/2021: Launch the project
Release early project incentives, build mining pools, launch main features online, prepare for the upcoming node launch, and gradually open 4 major mining pools to ensure immediate participation of users and investors and fairness of token distribution.
Q2/2021: Launch oracle feature
Openly invite all members in the OKChain ecosystem to compete to be the first batch of quotation nodes, ensuring the decentralization of nodes, and establish a sound and complete quotation node system.
Q3/2021: Increase quotation nodes
The first batch of nodes will be reviewed and screened, and quotation nodes will be added to avoid the risk of centralization due to node collusion attacks and price control by giants.
Q4/2021: Release v2.0 DataLink
Release v2.0 DataLink, adopting hierarchy mechanism and flexible cost mechanism to make data easy to use.
