The planned upgrade to the Flare Time Series Oracle comprises FTSO scaling and FTSO fast updates features. Combined, these improvements can give dapps access to up to 1000 data feeds every 1-2 seconds – for free.
FTSO scaling was approved by community governance at the beginning of March and implementation is underway. The new governance proposal for FTSO fast updates on Songbird is now available for review, with voting due to commence at the beginning of next week. If approved by the community, the same proposal will be submitted for approval on Flare.
More data delivered faster
Flare’s upgraded oracle will deliver a significant advancement in on-chain data access for businesses operating within decentralized finance, such as lending or trading dapps. By enhancing data accessibility and reducing usage costs, Flare’s oracles are a marked improvement over existing oracle technologies:
Accuracy & reliability: The FTSO is enshrined in the Flare network. That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s protected by the decentralization and security guarantees of the layer 1 blockchain, with the 100 validators responsible for network consensus also responsible for delivering the data feeds. If they don’t provide accurate and timely data to the FTSO, they don’t receive any rewards for either validation or data provision. This provides confidence in data accuracy, availability, and censorship resistance far greater than other oracle models.
Speed: With the implementation of fast updates, data feeds will be updated every block or 1-2 seconds. Dapps on Flare don’t need data faster than this because it’s the maximum speed transactions can be implemented on the network.
Cost: All open source data feeds will be available for free to all dapps building on Flare. In the future, dapps building on other chains will also be able to take advantage of the data provided by the FTSO for a small fee.
Variety: The upgraded FTSO has been designed to handle up to 1000 data feeds and will make it much easier for builders to add new data types.
Read more about the future plans for FTSO in the original announcement article.
FTSO scaling implementation update
FTSO scaling increases the number of data feeds the system can bring on-chain from 18 to up to 1000. It achieves this by minimizing on-chain computation, with the FTSO data providers performing all calculations off-chain and only publishing required verification information.
The scaling upgrade was approved by the Flare community in STP.06 and FIP.06, and we recently confirmed that a number of our most experienced data providers have already started submitting data via the new model on Songbird. This trial phase is the first of three implementation phases for FTSO scaling:
- Trial phase: Experienced data providers upgrade to the new model and begin submitting data. 100% of rewards are provided to the non-upgraded data providers until the trial phase concludes.
- Beta phase: The remaining data providers start to upgrade to FTSO scaling. The Foundation will provide support, following lessons learned during the trial phase. 50% of rewards are provided to each of upgraded and non-upgraded data providers.
- Deprecation phase: After a reasonable period of time allowing all data providers to upgrade, the rewards contract will be updated so that only upgraded data providers will receive any rewards. At this point the FTSO Scaling upgrade will be complete.
FTSO fast updates governance vote
Every 90 seconds, the FTSO system defines an anchor value for all data feeds. This is a highly decentralized and secure process in which all 100 independent data providers participate. With fast updates, additional stream values will be provided every 1-2 seconds by randomly selected data providers. Each block, the selected data providers confirm whether the stream value for each data feed should increase, decrease or stay the same as the previous stream value.
Similar to the 90 second anchor values, these stream values will be made available for free to builders on the network. For more volatile assets and periods, dapps will also be able to pay a fee to increase the sensitivity of the fast updates. This can be done by increasing the number of data providers which provide an update to the feed each block and by increasing the increment by which they can change the stream value.
Read more about the potential updates in the governance proposal. Voting on Songbird will commence at the beginning of next week. Ensure your SGB is wrapped before Saturday to participate. If the Songbird proposal is approved, a new proposal to implement FTSO fast updates on Flare will be submitted.