Thoughts on Ethereum Oracles

This was an interesting article on ethreum oracles.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/ethereums-missing-link-oracles-provide-off-blockchain-data-for-smart-contracts

The problem

Ethereum smart contracts only have access to information on their own Blockchain, and need a way to communicate with the outside world to be truly effective.

Proposed Oracle Solution

To bridge this gap in Ethereum’s capabilities, middleware “oracles” can be employed to communicate data from the world outside of the Blockchain, permitting smart contracts to be truly useful

Whats the Business Model?

I find these oracle ideas very Interesting. But what is it exactly and what is the business model?

What makes a good oracle?

The article uses a price as an example. In the paper world a contract might say to use a wsj published interest rate as a benchmark rate. The keys to a good oracle are trust, reputation, widely accessible, easily checkable. What's the crypto analog? Certainly existing database owners, government data sources, or some kind of sensor network( thermometers could be useful) could be nice oracles.

But how to make money?

I see three models

1. Perhaps oracles could charge ether(or some other crypto) to those using the service and then sell it in be open market.
2. They could give it away for free. (See govt databases)
3. Subscription allows you to hit the oracle whenever you want.

Interestingly it might be cheap enough to offer free oracle services for some time until you were the benchmark for many contracts.

Is There a Place for Steem?

I feel like Steem could be used as transaction currency. That's easy. The bigger prize is becoming the widely used oracle of some topic that steemit is well positioned to gather or better yet already has data on.

Witness Feeds a Place to Start.

Witnesses provide feeds of Steem sbd and I think btc and ether prices. Could this be packaged as a service to ether networks needing these prices? Here you will compete with exchanges but there is something nice about aggregating exchanges that might position Steem witnesses to win this market.

Monetizing Lead in Voting Applications

Steem has a lead in voting applications. Gathering and tallying votes from multiple users. This seems like a cababiliry an ether network might want. How can we set up the infraststructe to be a survey monkey of votes used in ether networks. Perhaps we need a way for non users to vote?

Just the Beginning

I am sure there are lots of good ideas. This is just my first random musings on what topic. Comment away.