With the rapid growth of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols and applications in the blockchain industry, there is an imperative need for secure and accurate digital assets price feeds as DeFi protocols rely on the reported price data to build products such as algorithmic stablecoins, or functions such as derivatives, lending and more. Coinbase announced the launch of its Coinbase Oracle API on April 23, a price feed that provides verified data for two pairings at present – BTC/USD and ETH/USD.
Available to the public, the signed price feed updates at one-minute intervals and pulls price data from the Coinbase Pro API. Data points outside of the projected volatility of the assets are eliminated with its off-chain filtering function, while the on-chain filtering feature will also suss out prices that differ vastly from the last price recorded by an ‘anchor source’. The data provided can be trusted because it is signed and secured with Coinbase’s private key. Similarly, individuals are free to check if the data is authentic via the Oracle’s public key.
Coinbase hopes to bolster security and reduce vulnerabilities in DeFi protocols and ecosystems that may be at risk due to inaccurate data points or signing keys that are not securely kept. The Coinbase Oracle comes at an opportune time as the DeFi sector is steadily taking off. As previously reported, DeFi platforms saw 200% growth early this month, achieved in just a little over a year.
“A Coinbase Price Oracle will be hugely impactful for the DeFi ecosystem — price oracles are used in every lending & derivatives protocol. Coinbase is uniquely positioned to provide oracle prices as they’re the most trusted and secure institution in the space. These prices can be used as an input to help create more decentralized and secure price oracles for the ecosystem,” says Antonio Juliano, CEO of dYdX, a decentralized crypto exchange platform based in the US.
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