Crypto Academy / Season 3 / Week 7 - Homework Post for professor [@albert] Blockchain oracle by @obikay

ORACLES?

Oracles can be defined as services that cater for data like the pricing information into smart contracts that allows the execution of transactions on the blockchain. Data here is the helping hand of smart contracts and the DeFi protocols relies on correct data for smooth operations.
On a Decentralized Exchange for instance, When making a trade BTC for ETH, the exchange depends on an oracle to acquire the recent price of the coin involved.
When there is an attack, the attacker might make profit by deflating or inflating with the price of a particular asset in a smart contract with incorrect data, thereby making trade and benefiting from it.
So, with the rise of such attacks, smart contracts are now earger to include smart contracts that can't be manipulated.
That brings us to the DIA network which is one of the most reliable oracle services. Unlike the others Chain link and BAND protocol which takes data from various sources. DIA network allows it's users to supply and also validate data.

History and Description. With it's Token.

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WHAT IS DIA?

[Decentralized information asset]
DIA is an open-source
ecosystem which provides supply, sourcing and verification of data, powering (DEFI) Decentralized finance system. Is a solution infrastructure element that Defi applications need to be reliable on, well known as oracle.

BRIEF HISTORY OF DIA

The DIA network was established in 2018 with it's token supply made generally at the time of bonding curve sale which was from August 3 to 17 having a total of 10.2 million tokens sold. DIA was formed by an association of people,with Paul Claudius, Michael Weber and Samuel Brack been the leaders. With Claudius been at the front page of the project.
The platform tends to make validated, auditable financial market data attainable and also open source to Decentralized financial market and traditional. Instead of providing and sourcing of data itself, the platform places crypto economic motive that set in motion the validation and sourcing of data by the community.
The Decentralized information asset is aiming to completely disperse governance thereby becoming a complete DAO by the year 2025.
The DIA system is handled by a group of skilled founders and experts in financial market. DIA is listed on KuCoin, Bitmax, Poloniex.

DIA TOKEN AND HOW IS IT USED?

It's governance token is DIA and it is recently established on ERC-20 protocol. Which was set in motion in August 2020.
It's token is used for:

• making vote on changes in the platform and current developments.
  The DIA network is developed by it's token holders and the community. Token holders can propose new and creative ways to upgrade the system, give funds and vote on the recent developments thereby staking with their DIA.

• Funds via data needs – Incase one needs data for the purpose of blockchain project, one can put bounties on particular data requirements with the DIA tokens.
  It's token can be used for:

• making vote on changes in the platform and current developments.
  The DIA network is developed by it's token holders and the community. Token holders can propose new and creative ways to upgrade the system, give funds and vote on the recent developments thereby staking with their DIA.

• Funds via data needs – Incase one needs data for the purpose of blockchain project, one can put bounties on particular data requirements with the DIA tokens.

• Validation of data via staking –
  Through staking of the DIA tokens one earns the the access of validating current oracles and more.

• Making payments– with the DIA tokens accessing of live data on the DIA network or buying a particular APIs is done.

DIA chart:

DIA price statistics:

According to Coinmarketcap

Functionalities and real-life applications.

HOW THE DIA NETWORK WORKS

The DIA Network is made up of 3 groups: we have the data users, the providers, and the analysts:

• The Data users
  Data users such as the blockchain based staking platforms request for data when there is no availability of a particular data points. This is done by the stakeholders using the DIA tokens to create a ticket and then fund their data request.
  The Data users have Free access of Historical data from DIA oracles or the API endpoints. But obtaining live data, they pay a fee.

• The Data providers
  These are individual users who make use of internet scrapers to supply the
  needed data for the DIA token rewards.
  In the DIA network, anybody is allowed to apply to become a data provider.

• The Resource validators or analysts:
  After submission of data by the data providers, the data analyst then makes a decision on which data provider that can be used to accomplish a data request and receiving of reward via a staking procedure. The validators by staking their DIA to a node and exerting extra impact with more DIA been staked. When a node validates inaccurately and it will be disciplined.
  The validated data now will be made obtainable to the user via an open source database on the DIA system.

DIA Labs;

The DIA lab is project set by the platform to provide assistance to anybody who is interested in the development of DEFi projects, meeting thier standards.
Which includes project like:

• projects that authorize extra well organized data sourcing.
• more Features to DIA network
• attributes that authorize interactivity within the DEFi ecosystem.
  The DeFi labs project motivates transformation on the DIA Network and generally in DeFi. It also encourages the disbursement of the DIA token also acceptable for business.

Pros and Cons

Advantages;

• DIA network allows it's users to supply and also validate data. It is also reliable and verifiable.

• DIA allows free access of Historical data from its platform or the API endpoints.

• DIA is an open source oracle system which means it is completely transparent.

Disadvantages;

• The DIA network charges it's users before they can access the live data.

Future developments and new projects

FUTURE GROWTH?
It's now obvious that oracle technologies has a major role to play in the future of Decentralized financial application. Like running crypto indexes like DEXTF or the PieDAO whereby the pricing feeds for an assets ratio is key. The DEFi sector in cryptocurrency is increasing across different networks like Binance smart chain, Etheruem, Polkadot. Projects like DIA raising an integral infrastructure element gains a chance of benefiting greatly

New projects

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0Chain and DIA merging to supply transparent data storage for DEFi apps at the same time running storage metadata and assigning pricing through the DIA nodes. With this 0chain will perform as storage level for distributed applications. Read on

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DIA integration with the xDia chain Read on