Pyth Network has taken the blockchain world by storm, rapidly emerging as the go-to platform for all manner of decentralized application’s real-time data needs. It now supplies on- and off-chain data to dApps across more than 50 blockchains, transforming the way they interact with the world.
Oracles are going to play a vital role in the future of blockchain. As Web3 becomes more prevalent, dApps will need a way to obtain accurate information about what’s happening in the real world. Without oracles, blockchains have no way to understand what happens outside of their own, closed networks. Oracles free blockchains from their confines, enabling them to access data from other chains and even traditional databases.
The earliest blockchain oracles helped to transform the world of dApps, giving them new capabilities by scraping data from various data sources. Now, Pyth Network is ushering in a new era of more capable oracles that are faster and more accurate than ever before.
Unlike other oracles, which can only refresh their data feeds every few minutes, or sometimes even hours, Pyth relies on the blazing-fast Solana to refresh its data feeds every few hundred milliseconds.
Top Protocols Using Pyth
For the Web3 developer community, there are few things more valuable than having access to real-time data, and that explains why Pyth has risen from virtually nowhere to one of the most popular oracles in all of crypto. According to DeFiLlama, Pyth is now the second-ranked oracle, securing 48% of all oracle-powered decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume in the world.
Blockchain developers are becoming increasingly reliant on Pyth to bring them up-to-the-second information on what’s happening in the world, so let's take a look at some of the top projects utilizing its services and the impact it has on them.
Pyth went cross-chain 8 months agoToday, Pyth secures 48% of all DEX trading pic.twitter.com/7a4sjW3Axq
— Pyth Network 🔮 (@PythNetwork) August 7, 2023
1. Synthetix on Optimism
Synthetix is a decentralized liquidity layer that was originally deployed on Ethereum before switching to the Optimism blockchain. It acts as a liquidity backend for some of the most popular and best-known DeFi protocols on both chains, enabling stakers to provide liquidity and collateralize a suite of synthetic assets and earn rewards for doing so.
The liquidity provided by Synthetix is used to underwrite the trading of synthetic assets and perpetual futures based on oracle prices, and eliminates the need for a traditional orderbook or counterparties. Due to this, its liquidity is composable and fungible access markets, and slippage is all but eliminated too.
Synthetix integrated with Pyth’s oracles following the launch of its Perps V2 upgrade in December 2022, enabling it to tap into Pyth data to power its ETH-Perps market. Since then, Synthetix Perps has grown to support more than 80 different digital assets and reach more than $40 billion in trading volume. Synthetix on Optimism is one of the most successful users of Pyth’s low-latency price feeds, and it has adopted the network as its primary off-chain data source.
2. LayerBank on Manta/Scroll/Linea
LayerBank is an EVM-compatible lending protocol built on the Linea blockchain. It provides a decentralized market that gives users complete control over their funds, with competitive interest rates that benefit both lenders and borrowers. Individuals can contribute digital assets to LayerBank, borrow funds and earn $LAB tokens as rewards.
LayerBank’s price feeds are fully derived from Pyth’s oracles, and its reliability has powered the project’s rapid expansion to additional networks including Manta and Scroll.
3. MarginFi on Solana
MarginFi is an over-collateralized lending and borrowing protocol built on Solana. With it, users can deposit various digital assets as collateral in order to borrow other assets against those deposits.
With a current total value locked of more than $18 million, MarginFi supports borrowing and lending for 12 assets, including $wSOL, $mSOL, $UXD, $JitoSOL, $USDC, $stSOL, $USDT, $ETH, $wBTC, $BONK, $HNT and $bSOL.
The protocol uses Pyth’s data fees indirectly via integrated trading protocols. According to Pyth, this enables MarginFi to ensure its price feeds are always up to date. In addition, Pyth’s confidence intervals enable MarginFi to design robust mechanisms that protect its users from third-party asset and exchange issues. It uses Pyth to track the price of supported asset types, and also to access additional data points that support its lending and risk management architecture.
4. Drift on Solana
An open-source DEX based on Solana, Drift Protocol is designed to enable transparent and non-custodial digital asset trading. The platform’s aim is to merge the friendly user-experience of CEX platforms with the unparalleled autonomy and transparency of DEXs to provide traders with the best of both worlds. It’s an appealing combination that has allowed Drift to become the largest perpetuals trading DEX on Solana, processing more than $11 billion in trading volume since its launch.
One of the reasons for Drift’s success is the diversity of markets it offers, which is due to its reliance on Pyth’s price feeds. It provides access to 15 markets across assets such as BTC, ETH, SOL, BONK, HNT and others. Recently, Drift added new perpetual markets for ARB and SUI on the very first day those chains launched their mainnets, underscoring the ability of Pyth to add new data sources as soon as they become available.
When Pyth launched its JITO/SOL price feed, Drift reciprocated and added a corresponding market to its platform in the same day, enabling JITO to be used as collateral. Drift also takes advantage of Pyth’s confidence interval functionality to respond to extreme market volatility and protect its users.
5. Kamino on Solana
Kamino Finance is a DeFi protocol that’s designed to make it as easy as possible for users to earn passive income from their crypto savings by providing liquidity. It describes itself as a first-of-its-kind DeFi application that unifies the concepts of lending, liquidity and leverage into a single product. It incorporates a wide range of financial applications, including borrowing, debt issuance, liquidity provision, beta-phase multiply, leveraged transactions and more, and best of all it presents them in a way that’s supposedly easy for novices to understand.
Kamino says it relies on a number of oracle data feeds, but the primary one is Pyth, which provides it with up-to-the-second data on prices for mainnet tokens including $USDC, $USDT, $SOL and $stSOL.
6. Navi on Sui
Navi is a liquidity protocol at its core and it claims to act as the beating heart of Sui’s growing DeFi ecosystem. It provides a multifaceted approach that empowers users to seamlessly borrow and lend a wide range of digital assets, providing enhanced liquidity and efficiency to benefit Sui’s entire ecosystem.
One thing that sets Navi apart from similar protocols is the way it draws inspiration from Aave, one of the best-known DeFi protocols on Ethereum. Aave’s influence is woven into the fabric of its design, and users of that platform will feel right at home both in the sense of its user-interface and the functionality it offers. However, Navi is also a forward-thinking protocol that positions itself as an early adopter of new trends and technological advancements.
As such, it’s little wonder that Navi has turned to Pyth for its low-latency price feeds, allowing it to efficiently and accurately reflect the true value of digital assets. Thanks to Pyth’s incredible accuracy, Navi is uniquely positioned to enforce platform security mechanisms such as timely liquidations and protect its users.
7. Thala on Aptos
Thala is a DeFi protocol that’s native to the Aptos blockchain, and its platform revolves around three main products, namely Thala Swap, Thala LSD and Move Dollar. The protocol currently boasts more than $100 million in total value locked, and is uniquely both a user of Pyth’s data feeds and a data supplier.
Pyth welcomed Thala as a data provider in January 2024, saying that the partnership enables Thala to contribute to its DEX market data for multiple digital assets. It’s a key partnership for Pyth that enables it to support price feeds for a number of tokens built on Aptos, including $THL and $MOD, which is Thala’s overcollateralized stablecoin.
8. Mars on Osmosis/Neutron
Mars is a non-custodial, open-source, community-governed and algorithmic credit protocol for the future that offers a fully-automated on-chain credit facility anyone can access. It was originally built on the ill-fated Terra blockchain, and was seen as extremely novel for its use of interest rates that are priced algorithmically based on utilization rate, allowing for greater responsiveness and capital efficiency.
Following the collapse of Terra, Mars migrated to the Cosmos mainnet before launching on Osmosis, and later, Neutron. It has launched a unique feature called Farm Vaults that enables liquidity providers to increase their rewards.
The Martian Council, which is the DAO in charge of Mars’ community governance, selected Pyth as its main data oracle for its price feeds in June 2023. It said at the time that it chose Pyth because it stands out for its capacity to use multiple price sources to provide more accurate data, increasing its robustness against price manipulation attacks. Mars said the integration of Pyth’s data provides it with a golden opportunity to refine and strengthen its oracle mechanisms and ensure more accurate and reliable asset pricing.
9. Helix on Injective
The final protocol on our list is Helix, which is a platform for unlimited trading of cross-chain crypto assets and perpetual markets with industry-leading rebates. Helix aims to revolutionize Injective’s DeFi ecosystem with a completely redesigned DEX experience, more advanced order types and superior reward tracking functionality.
Helix built its protocol on the Injective blockchain due to its ability to support digital assets from across the Ethereum, Cosmos, EVMOS and Moonbeam ecosystems. It supports an extensive range of bridge assets and crypto wallets to enable a simplified and seamless trading experience.
Helix makes use of more than 200 price feeds supplied by Pyth, covering digital assets, equities, commodities and foreign exchange pairs. By integrating with Pyth and its low-latency data feeds, Helix is able to efficiently calculate the hourly funding rate of its derivatives markets.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
