Steven M

Since the RLUSD x Chainlink announcement I’ve had a lot of questions as to why Flare isn’t competing in the oracle space by offering its oracles on other networks. The answer is simple, the external oracle business isn’t a good business. You can see here the fees generated by Chainlink: defillama.com/fees/chainlink The fees generated by Chainlink for providing data are minuscule relative to the value of the Chainlink token. Chainlink is by far the market leader but the market seemingly will not pay materially for the data that Chainlink is providing. This broadly applies to other external oracle providers aswell. Without changing their tokenomics this makes it really hard for Chainlink to build in a staking based security model to their protocol as there is very little fee revenue to pay out. This is why Chainlink relies on a trust based security model and has a relatively low number of data providers. Now, Flare isn’t an external oracle service, it is a full smart contract chain with enshrined data protocols (FTSO & FDC). Validation and data provision are provided by the same entities, secured through proof of stake. Flare’s oracles already power DeFi, FAssets and will power native staking for XRP, BTC & others. There are many many other usecases on Flare that can & will be powered by Flare’s data protocols. Security on Flare is derived not from trust but from the symbiotic value created by the unique utility of bringing together a full smart contract platform with its own enshrined data services which are purpose built to serve the ecosystems needs. Now none of this means that Flare won’t provide its data on other networks it just means that the market opportunity for doing so as a pure service like Chainlink doesn’t really exist. Honestly, let Chainlink have that market as it isn’t much of a market. In order for data provision to other chains to make sense it would need to be part of a product or initiative that generates material growth for Flare. Right now the far bigger priority and market opportunity is in encouraging and spearheading the development of Flare’s native ecosystem based on its enshrined Oracles, brilliant developers, committed data providers and enthusiastic community.

FAssets Open Beta has now been launched! 🚀 🚀 🚀