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However, there is one potential weakness that has so far held up the practical deployment of smart contracts. The triggers of such contracts must ultimately depend on factors outside the contract itself, outside the blockchain or platform it sits on, and in the real world. For smart contracts to work, real-world information must be brought into them to meet the execution criterion.
Customers have had to rely on the good faith and accuracy of the relevant oracle or oracles up until now, with no way of verifying their reliability or securing recourse if they prove unreliable. This is a major problem for the development of smart contracts. All of that is about to change when smart contracts reach their second generation, thanks to the breakthrough introduction of decentralized oracle reliability verification in the form of the QED Oracle protocol.
So let us learn about this and base software- DelphiOracle.
What is the QED Oracle Protocol?
QED is an Oracle protocol and utility token model that is designed to ultimately interface with any blockchain or smart contract platform. The initial QED platform consists of performance scaling components built on UX Network, as well as treasury and funding components built on Ethereum for secure settlement at the value layer The initial version manages Oracles delivering data to smart contracts that typically reside on DeFi platforms. Further rollouts will include other services or work that Oracles need to provide that create the foundations for decentralized protocols and economies.
The Oracle Dilemma
Errors are unrecoverable by code once a genuinely trustless smart contract has released transaction value. This effectively means that smart contracts that aren't protected by oracle ranking can't solve the garbage-in-garbage-out problem. If erroneous data is entered into such naive smart contracts, there is no way to get restitution because there is no mechanism built into the contract. The unhappy party will be obliged to employ traditional recovery methods, destroying any value he may have earned from the use of a smart contract once more.
QED believes that a mechanism for restitution should be established, but that any action must comply with the principles of smart contracts and decentralization. When you add off-chain systems and actors, it becomes a completely different game. That isn't to suggest that such systems don't have a place, because everything has to be functional. QED, on the other hand, is primarily geared to connect into decentralized networks, and its value proposition in this regard includes keeping the basics of distributed systems.
The problem is inverted with QED. Rather than chasing recovery after an event, QED Oracle’s bonds collateral upfront and implements a claims mechanism afterward. The use of oracles to post collateral ensures that the means of reparation are included in the contract. Restitution becomes as natural (and unnoticed) as the completion of a claim-free and successful transaction. The system is underwritten by an on-chain claim and resolution mechanism that uses accuracy ratings and incentives to underpin the system.
What is the DelphiOracle?
The origin story of QED is that they previously created a really popular piece of Oracle software, the DelphiOracle, in 2017. QED is not a new company. The QED Oracles' core smart contracts have been battle-tested for over four years, withstanding a variety of market situations. This is also something they like to point out to people when they inquire if the smart contracts have been audited - something they don't believe in.
It is the most used Oracle software for the WAX blockchain, with around 60,000 uses and just under 10,000 users every week. That is just on WAX and a lot of its usage can’t be monitored because it is hosted privately and open source. The price feeds you see on the website are DelphiOracles that have been running non-stop for around 4 years. They have pushed over 1 million data points in their lifetime and have never ceased to function all at once - even during the Crypto Black Thursday crash - and have never been hacked.