Switchboard V1 let us show the community how data can be routed on-chain and provided to smart contracts. Since inception, Switchboard has been adopted by many projects across the Solana ecosystem including Mango Markets, Saber, LIQ, and Solend, but we’re not done there. Switchboard V2 will build upon these concepts and give more power to the community to determine the direction of the project. Over the next few weeks we will be rolling out more information on the design of V2 and look to the community for feedback. Without further ado, here is an overview of some of the roles and responsibilities for Switchboard V2.
Switchboard V2 allows the community to decide which data should live on-chain. Below are the main roles of the Switchboard ecosystem, and the functions each role performs:
Curators are the visionaries of the network and are responsible for finding off-chain data the community may like to see on-chain and submitting proposals to a registry. Curators are then rewarded with a percentage of revenue generated from a data feed to incentivize community curation. The registry acts as a “Data Store” where people can view proposed on-chain data.
Publishers are responsible for browsing the registry and building data feeds from a collection of “jobs” (endpoints). Publishers then finalize the data feed configuration including its update interval, provide the upfront capital to fund the data feed over a specified interval, and submit the data feed to the DAO for the community to vote on.
The DAO has a few key responsibilities which include voting on adding potential data feeds to the network. The DAO lets the community decide what data should be published on chain.
If a submitted data feed has a low refresh rate such that it does not tax the existing queue, it will be automatically granted permission to the network. Once a data feed has been accepted to the network, it will be added to the oracle queue and updated at its specified interval set by the publisher.
Oracles are nodes who are responsible for fulfilling network requests and act as the intermediary between the Solana blockchain and the internet. Oracles with a set amount of capital staked are automatically granted approval to the network. Oracles can also be added to the network by submitting a DAO proposal and letting the community vote. An oracle is then ready to fulfill job requests after a specified warm up period. Future articles will go into further details with the incentives nodes have to remain honest.
As you can see Switchboard V2 puts more power into the hands of the community. The DAO is responsible for what data is available on-chain and which nodes can fulfill those requests. We are excited to roll out the next iteration of Switchboard and can’t wait to see what the community builds with Switchboard!