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Once there is a proper infrastructure for trusted Oracles, there will be lots of interesting applications: small group crowd funding, payment distribution from

Once there is a proper infrastructure for trusted Oracles, there will be lots of interesting applications: small group crowd funding, payment distribution from trusts,execution of wills.

kang 9y ago
oracle is just a blockchain buzzword for api
- sremani 9y ago
  Is it? I was thinking it was more like .. "trusted external entity" Here is a [old] post from the horses mouth https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/ethereum-and-oracles/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/ethereum-and-oracles/
WJW 9y ago
While I would love for this to be a thing, most cryptocurrency enthusiasts seem to distrust anything and everyone. How would one develop an oracle trusted enough that it would be accurate while not being vulnerable to sudden betrayals? There are for example plenty of stories from Eve Online (closest example of a lawless/trustless universe) where a very trusted middleman suddenly changed behavior when the benefits became great enough. Especially when a cryptocoin includes strong anonymity, betrayal has very low downside since no retribution would be possible. However even if such anonymity is not present, it may not be possible to get retribution if the entity on the other side is (for example) the mafia.
- koolba 9y ago
  Do you have a link for the Eve Online example?
  - wrinkl3 9y ago
    http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/07/09/eve-online-bank-scandal http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/07/09/eve-online-bank-scand... This is a classic example in which a user ran an in-game bank for some time, before making away with all of his clients assets.
RealityVoid 9y ago
Uhh, with the risk of sounding "shilly", there is this token called chain link that is supposed to do just that, act as an oracle for data from the outside world.
RealityVoid 9y ago
With the risk of sounding "shilly", there is this token called chain link that is supposed to do just that, act as an oracle for data from the outside world.
lelbloster 9y ago
> trusted Oracles but why?! WHY?! i thought the whole point of this blockchain stuff was that there was no trust in any one entity/group of entities (aside from the chain itself) as soon as you have "blockchain plus a few trusted people", does that not completely undermine the whole idea? why not just have a few trusted people?
- jklepatch 9y ago
  A blockchain can only process its own data, no external api call allowed. Unfortunately a lot of interesting applications require access to external data. Thats what oracle are for. They import external data into the blockchains, embedded in transactions. Yes it does undermine the security model of the blockchain, but they are some work arounds. For example, you can have several oracles, and you can decided to only accept data that was provided by a majority of oracles, thus rejecting outliers.

Once there is a proper infrastructure for trusted Oracles, there will be lots of interesting applications: small group crowd funding, payment distribution from trusts,execution of wills.

kang 9y ago

oracle is just a blockchain buzzword for api

sremani 9y ago
Is it? I was thinking it was more like .. "trusted external entity" Here is a [old] post from the horses mouth https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/ethereum-and-oracles/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/ethereum-and-oracles/

WJW 9y ago

While I would love for this to be a thing, most cryptocurrency enthusiasts seem to distrust anything and everyone. How would one develop an oracle trusted enough that it would be accurate while not being vulnerable to sudden betrayals? There are for example plenty of stories from Eve Online (closest example of a lawless/trustless universe) where a very trusted middleman suddenly changed behavior when the benefits became great enough. Especially when a cryptocoin includes strong anonymity, betrayal has very low downside since no retribution would be possible. However even if such anonymity is not present, it may not be possible to get retribution if the entity on the other side is (for example) the mafia.

koolba 9y ago
Do you have a link for the Eve Online example?
- wrinkl3 9y ago
  http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/07/09/eve-online-bank-scandal http://www.ign.com/articles/2009/07/09/eve-online-bank-scand... This is a classic example in which a user ran an in-game bank for some time, before making away with all of his clients assets.

RealityVoid 9y ago

Uhh, with the risk of sounding "shilly", there is this token called chain link that is supposed to do just that, act as an oracle for data from the outside world.

RealityVoid 9y ago

With the risk of sounding "shilly", there is this token called chain link that is supposed to do just that, act as an oracle for data from the outside world.

lelbloster 9y ago

> trusted Oracles but why?! WHY?! i thought the whole point of this blockchain stuff was that there was no trust in any one entity/group of entities (aside from the chain itself) as soon as you have "blockchain plus a few trusted people", does that not completely undermine the whole idea? why not just have a few trusted people?

jklepatch 9y ago
A blockchain can only process its own data, no external api call allowed. Unfortunately a lot of interesting applications require access to external data. Thats what oracle are for. They import external data into the blockchains, embedded in transactions. Yes it does undermine the security model of the blockchain, but they are some work arounds. For example, you can have several oracles, and you can decided to only accept data that was provided by a majority of oracles, thus rejecting outliers.