Tellor, a decentralized oracle that provides a secure solution for those that need high-value off-chain data in their smart contracts, today announced its launch to the Ethereum mainnet.
The Tellor oracle is an on-chain data bank where staked miners compete to add the data points. To create a properly incentivized system Tellor mints a native token, “Tributes.” Parties pay Tellor Tributes to submit a request for data to the oracle.
Tellor utilizes Proof-of-work consensus mechanisms within a hybrid model to secure the oracle. In addition to the security provided by the PoW process, the Tellor team has added an additional layer of security through the deposit of Tributes which miners are required to stake before they are allowed to mine and risk losing their stake if their submitted values are successfully challenged.
Since smart contracts on Ethereum are fully self-contained and any information or access to off-chain data is restricted, certain types of smart contracts are reliant on an outside provider (an oracle) of off-chain data points. The problem is there is now a decentralized smart contract with a centralized key point of failure. Tellor aims to capture a wide-open market for decentralized oracles with a ready now product.
“Our competitors are aiming to allow any smart contract to query any piece of off-chain data, which is still very much open research as to whether or not that is feasible anytime soon. Instead, we aimed for something that would be measurably secure, fully decentralized, and ready right now to provide high-value pricing data on-chain.”
– Brenda Loya, CEO of Tellor
In April and May of this year, Binance Labs invested in Tellor and for 4 weeks the team worked in the Binance Labs Berlin chapter as they worked on finishing development, gearing up for the mainnet launch.