ICO Review of ZAP ($ZAP) ChainLink and Oraclize competitor

cryptoportfolio (59)in #ethereum • 7 years ago (edited)

Oraclize and Chainlink are going to be the providers of the real-world data (in other words, off-chain data) to the blockchains. This data is vital for decentralized applications which will disintermediate different financial, insurance, shipping, and exchange services. For example, with the help of blockchain oracles, you will be able to use synthetic derivatives right on the Ethereum blockchain.

As you may know, there are two types of oracles. First type is crowd consensus oracles, Gnosis and Augur are two best examples here. Tokenholders are, at the same time, voters in Gnosis and Augur ecosystems. Each time outcome nears, they have to vote on the resolution. Another type of oracles is deterministic ones. Oraclize is the oracle which already deterministically powers such projects as vDice, Flight Delay DAPP and others. For instance, Oraclize gets its random number generation from random.org and sends this information in readable format to vDice smart contracts. ZAP works almost the same way but all users can become off-chain data providers. Let’s see if this project will be able to compete with existing oracles.

I will not say much about the team. If you are really interested, check out their website (https://www.zap.store/team.html). Team members participated in opening the Bitcoin Center in New York, creating Bitcoin ATMs, founding Vote Watcher, the blockchain voting machine. Also, they are advised by Andy Goldstein from Metal, Jonathan Heyman from Digital Assets, Peter Mikkelsen from Nordic Blockchain Association, and others.

Zap is an oracle marketplace, which provides link between smart-contracts and off-chain data. Oracles and subscribers are the main participants in this ecosystem. Anyone can be an oracle and anyone can subscribe to data feed.

You can create any data feed you want, just be sure to make it useful for subscribers. For example, you can supply exchange rates data or data from NASDAQ. Also, it was interesting to find out in their DEMO version that you can actually get data about the political life of the country. ZAP showed that it was possible to get major political events information in readable format for your decentralized applications.

Oracles are not based on crowd wisdom (like in GNO & REP), but on centralized sources. That is why they use rating system to reward non-malicious data providers. If oracle starts to supply you with false data, you will be able to decrease rating of underlying provider and write a comment about inconsistences.

ZAP tokens are used to access and monetize data feeds. Everything is priced in ZAP tokens so if you want to subscribe to particular data feed, you need to buy ZAPs. If you want to supply data, you will receive remunerations in form of ZAPs.

The project aims at competing with Ethereum-based Oracles providers, such as Oraclize and Chanilink. Currently, it is almost impossible to measure the market volume of oracles in blockchain space. We need some time to pass to finally understand how this market will grow.

The main advantage of ZAP over Oraclize and Chainlink is the ability to empower data-feed providers on the platform. ZAP.store will let anyone create his own data feed. If subscribers find that this provider is useful and non-malicious, the data feed will be popular and the creator will receive payments.

Tokenholders will be rewarded with the growth of the ecosystem and the success of the data-feed producers and consumers.