After years of hard work and development, the Polkadot ecosystem is gearing up for the launch of numerous parachains that will set the foundation for its interoperable blockchain ecosystem. As one of the first couple parachains planned to go live, Acala is focused on hitting the ground running with a full service, multi-chain DeFi Hub built on Polkadot. Ensuring a successful and secure launch of Acala means integrating with key infrastructure and tooling required for rapid development and robust security of user funds.
One of the most important pieces of infrastructure to the Acala DeFi parachain is oracles, as oracles provide key inputs like asset prices and market information needed to perform critical functions. It’s why Acala is actively integrating Chainlink Price Feeds to create a strong foundation for its DeFi ecosystem, giving developers access to the industry’s most time-tested decentralized oracle solutions right at launch. Through Chainlink, developers will be able to tap into decentralized price oracles for a wide range of asset prices that are backed by high-quality data, low latency updates, and robust underlying infrastructure optimized for availability and tamper-resistance.
Both teams have been working in the background the past few months to ensure the security of the integration, including completion of a security audit. The progress has also been accelerated by the launch of the Chainlink Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) Pallet—a plug-and-play solution for connecting Chainlink Price Feeds to any blockchain built with Polkadot’s SDK, Substrate, like Acala. The Chainlink Oracle Pallet is a runtime module that can be easily plugged into Acala, providing a straightforward approach for accessing Chainlink Price Feeds. Additionally, Acala has also integrated Chainlink Price Feeds into Karura, Acala’s sister-network on Kusama, where extensive stress testing has taken place in preparation for the Acala’s launch on Polkadot.
Acala is a multi-chain DeFi platform in the Polkadot ecosystem that helps users stake, swap, borrow, lend, earn, and otherwise put their tokens to work with minimal network fees. As a highly scalable, EVM-compatible network optimized to power a wide diversity of DeFi applications, developers can deploy innovative financial use cases that will benefit from Acala’s ability to blend the best of the EVM and Substrate worlds. Acala’s layer-1 chain will offer a broad suite of DeFi primitives to developers building on the platform, including a trustless staking derivative called Liquid DOT (LDOT), a multi-collateralized stablecoin backed by cross-chain assets called aUSD, and an AMM DEX called Acala Swap where fees can be paid in any token.
Powering Acala’s planned DeFi dApps and the numerous other DeFi products and markets permissionlessly launched on the Acala parachain will require the industry’s best oracles. For example, DeFi applications like lending/borrowing markets, futures/options contracts, and even algorithmic stablecoins need external data like current asset prices or market information like Consumer Price Index (CPI) or total market cap. There are a limitless number of external data feeds users may need, which do not natively exist on the blockchain.
Getting external data on the blockchain requires an oracle to fetch data, aggregate it, validate it, and then deliver it on-chain. However, if DeFi applications are to retain the trust assumptions of the blockchain, then the oracles they rely on must provide similar guarantees on their services to ensure end-to-end security and reliability. It’s why Acala has elected to integrate Chainlink to power the launch of the Acala parachain, as it’s decentralized oracle solutions are built to the highest standards and proven to help secure tens of billions in value across the DeFi economy. Some of the notable features of Chainlink Price Feeds include:
- High-Quality Data — Chainlink Price Feeds source data from numerous premium data aggregators, leading to price data that’s aggregated from hundreds of exchanges, weighted by volume, and cleaned from outliers and suspicious volumes. Chainlink’s data aggregation model generates accurate global market prices that are resistant to API downtime, flash crash outliers, and data manipulation attacks like flash loans.
- Secure Node Operators — Chainlink Price Feeds are secured by independent, security-reviewed, and Sybil-resistant oracle nodes run by leading blockchain DevOps teams, data providers, and traditional enterprises. Chainlink nodes have a strong track record for reliability, even during high gas prices and extreme network congestion.
- Decentralized Network — Chainlink Price Feeds are decentralized at the data source, oracle node, and oracle network levels, generating strong protections against downtime and tampering by either the data provider or the oracle network.
- Economies of Scale — Chainlink Price Feeds benefit from economies of scale effect, where increasing adoption allows multiple projects to collectively use and fund shared oracle networks to fetch commonly required datasets (e.g. DOT/USD). This allows DeFi projects to get premium data quality and robust oracle security for a fraction of the total cost.
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