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· 2 min read
YY

How can Switchboard empower the next wave of blockchain applications?​

Oracles remain a crucial role player in any blockchain ecosystem, acting as the intermediary between blockchains and real world data. Switchboard has provided, and continues to provide, permissionless data for developers to build on top of.

Since pre-deployment of the Switchboard oracle protocol, we have stood by the ideology of putting the developer experience first and empowering developers with the tools they need to build innovative blockchain applications. In order to empower and reach more developers, Switchboard Labs believes that infrastructure protocols must expand horizontally across blockchains, bringing their network and tooling to more developers.

Question: Which chain?​

A new, promising blockchain has emerged: Sui by Mysten Labs. . Mysten was launched in 2021 by former executives of Meta’s Novi Research and lead architects of the Diem blockchain and Move programming language. The company’s inaugural product, Sui, is a decentralised, proof of stake blockchain that builds on important innovations in consensus algorithms and leverages novel data structures to deliver a high-performance, low-cost Layer 1.

*Quote from Mysten Labs: “Oracle networks represent critical web3 tooling which developers rely on to build high-performing dApps. We are excited to partner with Switchboard and empower our community to curate their own data sources and publish permissionless data feeds to the Sui blockchain.”*

Mysten Lab’s technological advancements and vision have attracted and welcomed many developers around the world to the Sui ecosystem. In a handful of months, we’ve seen many aspiring teams building exciting projects seeking to establish their presence on Sui.

Hence, we believe that by expanding our oracle network and building blocks to Sui, we can ultimately empower the next wave of developers to build blockchain applications welcoming the next billion users to web3.

#PluggedintoSui​

We are officially announcing Switchboard’s next multi-chain expansion to the Sui blockchain!

Our core application, Publisher and Explorer, will retain its value and familiarity across the chains to enhance overall developing experience. We’re thrilled to be a part of this journey and do keep a look out for the very first permission-less, decentralised, customisable oracle implementation on Sui — providing developers with general purpose data feeds (price, sports, weather, events data, etc.) and Verifiable Random Function (VRF).

It’ll be electrifying!

Check out our links here!

Join our community today and stay tuned to our upcoming events!

· 3 min read
YY
gallynaut

After 1–2 months of researching, building, testing and hardcore shipping, Switchboard Labs is proud and happy to present to you, our mainnet alpha implementation on NEAR!

In this article, we’ll discuss the following:

  • NEAR Foundation grant

  • What we currently support

  • What to look out for

  • Links and resources to start developing

NEAR Foundation Grant​

In the past 2 months of research and development, we’ve been in active discussions with the NEAR Foundation about the NEAR ecosystem. We quickly learned there is a need for more projects contributing to the infrastructure of the NEAR ecosystem. In particular, tools that help support the developer experience.

Read our #PluggedintoNEAR article to learn about our expansion to NEAR.

We’d love to take the opportunity to thank the NEAR Foundation for supporting us with a grant to:

  • Kickstart research and development in the infancy stage;

  • Steadily push mainnet alpha to production;

  • Manage developer operations;

  • Fund initial set of first-party Switchboard sponsored feeds.

What does Switchboard currently support?​

As Switchboard Labs expands our oracle to support NEAR, our products retain its values and familiarities to provide the best developer experience for builders across the chains.

Explorer​

As mentioned above, Switchboard Labs will sponsor a set of first-party data feeds to provide a quick start for developers to copy the feed address with ease and plug them into their programs to read the data. These data feeds are namely the top few cryptocurrencies and they can be found on the Explorer page.

Publisher​

The Publisher retains its features of the catalog and custom feed builder (with Web 2 fetch, Parse, Math, Logic task types readily available). With the Publisher’s core features of permissionlessness and customizability, developers can build, fund and manage their data feeds all on our application without the need of any form contact or friction.

Read our thread to learn about our products. Read our documentation to learn about NEAR integrations. Read our github to dive deeper about NEAR implementations.

What to look out for?​

As we continue to improve and collaborate closely with various protocols on NEAR, expect to see new Web 3 fetch task types populating in the custom feed builder. Those task types will support fetching of on-chain price data from AMMs, CLOBs and more. Additionally, we will continue to update our documentation and provide developer support to current and new builders across the NEAR ecosystem!

We’re excited to be a part of NEAR and its ecosystem to plug into the next wave of blockchain applications. Stick around as announcements regarding workshops and more coming soon!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/switchboardxyz

Discord: https://discord.gg/switchboardxyz

Telegram: https://t.me/switchboardxyz

Documentation: https://docs.switchboard.xyz

Other links: https://linktr.ee/switchboardxyz

· 3 min read
YY
gallynaut

Aptos Labs has officially launched their L1 blockchain to mainnet on 17 October 2022! A great feat for Move developers to begin building products and use cases on mainnet; providing end users with a fresh experience within Aptos’s ecosystem.

Oracles play a crucial and integral role in the genesis of any blockchain mainnet launch — providing developers with the necessary data (such as price, weather, sports and more data fetch-able through Switchboard!) to plug into their products.

Hence, in order to build a strong infrastructure foundation, Switchboard Labs is proud and thrilled to announce the official co-launch of our oracle protocol with Aptos Labs and many of its ecosystem protocols!

In this article, we’ll discuss:

  • Aptos grant

  • What we currently support

  • What to look out for

  • Links and resources to start developing

Aptos Grant​

In the past 2 months of research and development, we’ve discussed closely with Aptos regarding supporting data needs for day 1 on Aptos mainnet. From the sheer amount of support and the increasing number of protocols building on Aptos, we realise the need for infrastructure protocols to be readily available. By expanding our oracle protocol to Aptos for its mainnet launch, Switchboard Labs aim to enhance developer experience and scaffold a strong foundation for the ecosystem.

Read our #PluggedintoAptos article to learn about our expansion to Aptos.

We’d love to take the opportunity to thank Aptos for supporting us with a grant to:

  • Kickstart research and development in the infancy stage;

  • Speedily push production to mainnet;

  • Manage developer operations;

  • Fund initial set of first-party Switchboard sponsored feeds.

What Switchboard currently support​

As Switchboard Labs expands our oracle to support Aptos, our products retain its values and familiarities to provide the best developer experience for builders across the chains.

Bringing the Switchboard Experience to a multi-chain level.

Explorer​

On day 1 of mainnet, as mentioned above, Switchboard Labs will sponsor a set of first-party data feeds to provide a quick start for developers to consume the data. These data feeds can be found on the Explorer page.

Publisher​

On day 1 of mainnet, the Publisher retains its features of the catalog and custom feed builder (with Web 2 fetch, Parse, Math, Logic task types readily available).

Read our thread to learn about our products. Read our documentation to learn about Aptos integrations.

What to look out for​

As we continue to build and collaborate closely with various protocols building on Aptos, expect to see support for fetching of on-chain price data from AMMs, CLOBs and more. Additionally, we will continue to update our documentation and provide developer support to current and new builders across the Aptos ecosystem!

We’re excited to be on this journey with Aptos and its ecosystem to plug into the next wave of blockchain applications. Stick around as announcements regarding workshops and more are coming soon!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/switchboardxyz

Discord: https://discord.gg/switchboardxyz

Documentation: https://docs.switchboard.xyz

Other links: https://linktr.ee/switchboardxyz

· 2 min read
YY
gallynaut

Switchboard’s multi-chain expansion plan

At Switchboard, we believe the future of oracle protocols is to expand across the ever-growing amount of blockchains — empowering any developer coming from any background, touching first base on any codebase, blockchain and ecosystem.

Question: Which chain?

The very first inception of Switchboard protocol is built on top of the Rust program language. We’ve seen the growing love for Rust in developers, and in order to empower more developers building with Rust, it makes sense to expand towards another Rust-based blockchain.

#PluggedintoNEAR

With that said, Switchboard Labs is excited to officially announce the expansion of Switchboard protocol to NEAR blockchain!

What does Switchboard bring to the NEAR ecosystem?

Being a permissionless oracle protocol, Switchboard’s philosophy is to firstly build a low-code UI that reduces friction for developers. Instead of going through layers of contacts to spin up a generic data feed, on Switchboard’s Publisher, a developer can build their own data feed within minutes and have full customizability, management over their own feeds.

Apart from our core infrastructure products, by bringing our oracle infrastructure to NEAR, we believe providing developer workshops to educate and onboard new developers is of utmost importance. Ultimately, this will help enhance current and future developers’ building experience on NEAR blockchain.

wen dev-net?

Switchboard Labs has been heads down to build out the very same developer-friendly experience for NEAR developers.

Word on the street is: *The more “#PluggedintoNEAR” we receive, we just might have a surprise during NEARCON.*

Join our community and build with Switchboard where you plug and play with oracles!

It’ll be electrifying.

· 2 min read
YY
gallynaut

PluggedintoAptos

How to bring the next million developers to Web 3?

In order to empower developers to build in Web 3, Switchboard preaches and builds its oracle protocol with a developer-first approach. However, how can we reach MORE developers?

Switchboard Labs believes the future of an infrastructure protocol is to expand horizontally, bringing its network and tooling to more developers.

Question: Which chain?

With the emergence of the new blockchain, Aptos and its enticing Move codebase, attracting both experienced and novice Web 3 developers. Additionally, in the matter of a handful of months, we’ve seen many projects seeking to establish its presence in Aptos.

Hence, we believe that by expanding our oracle network and building blocks to Aptos, we can ultimately empower the next wave of developers.

#PluggedintoAptos

We are officially announcing Switchboard’s first multi-chain expansion is to the Aptos blockchain.

wen dev-net?

Switchboard Labs has been heads down to build out the very same developer-friendly experience for Aptos developers.

Word on the street is: *The more “#PluggedintoAptos” we receive, the faster we ship.*

Yes, we’re starting a MOVEment and this is only the beginning. Watch out for the very first permission-less, decentralized, customizable oracle implementation on Aptos.

It’ll be electrifying.

Check out our links here!

Join our community today and stay tuned to our upcoming events!

· 5 min read
YY
gallynaut

Switchboard is celebrating its one year anniversary! It’s actually our 3 months past our anniversary but we were too busy chewing glass to look up at a calendar.

In this article,​

We’ll be taking a walk down memory lane, looking back at all we’ve accomplished. After which, we’ll take a look at the road ahead of us. We also want to give a big thank you to all our supporters and community members who made this possible.

Looking back…​

Switchboard started off as a hackathon idea. We had the crazy notion that developers should be able to take any off-chain OR on-chain data and create their own data feeds.

Permission-less without the bullshit.​

NO exclusivity contracts, NO “sponsorships”, NO waiting for teams’ responses.

This means, no headaches and all you need to do is

  1. Select the data (pricing data, outcome of an event, weather of a city);

  2. Customize the parameters to fit to your custom use cases;

  3. Pay the necessary transaction fees to publish a feed on-chain.

· 17 min read
gallynaut

Oracles are not a one size fit all solution, in fact redundancy should be used depending on your use cases and risk tolerance

Developers building real world applications for web3 rely on oracles to relay and publish data on-chain. Oracles are not a one size fit all solution, in fact redundancy should be used depending on your use cases and risk tolerance. Switchboard’s goal is to generalize data feeds and leave it up to the developer to configure and tune their data flow. Today’s article looks at how Switchboard feeds differ from other providers, and how you can configure your data feed to increase economic security.

We also have an infographic which summarizes this article: https://docs.switchboard.xyz/img/Data_Feed_Best_Practices.png

· 4 min read
gallynaut

Switchboard continues to be the only provider for verifiable randomness (VRF) on Solana and today we are excited to announce a fee reduction bringing the overall cost of a VRF request down to just under 0.002 SOL — a 50x reduction!

Initially, Switchboard set the cost of a VRF request to 0.1 SOL to protect the oracles from being overwhelmed with VRF requests, which could potentially crash the oracles as they awaited the VRF proof to confirm. Switchboard oracles have since migrated to using nonce accounts, or non-expiring transactions, to submit the necessary proofs, reducing the oracle’s memory footprint, and increasing the overall reliability of successfully completing the VRF proof. See the twitter thread below for more information.

Switchboard will continue listening to the developer ecosystem in order to help power the next wave of projects on Solana. If you’re a developer that is integrating randomness into your application, we would love to connect and see how it can be further improved.

What is Randomness?​

Random numbers are a useful building block for many applications, such as gaming and some consensus protocols. Without an element of randomness, games and protocols can be cheated when adversaries are able to influence the outcome.

While true-randomness on some computers can be made possible via atmospheric noise and special hardware modules, such solutions on blockchains are not possible since they are virtual machines without physical hardware. Thus, pseudorandom-functions are needed to close this gap.

Enter Verifiable Random Function (VRF). A VRF is a public-key pseudorandom function that provides proofs that its outputs were calculated correctly. This means we can use a cryptographic keypair to generate a random number with a proof, which can then be validated by anyone to ensure the value was calculated correctly without the possibility of leaking the producer’s secret key. You can read more about VRF from the Algorand team, whose founder was one of the authors on the original VRF paper.

Is Switchboard VRF Secure?​

Switchboard’s implementation adheres to volume 11 of the Internet Research Task Force’s (IRTFs) draft for VRF. If you like math feel free to check it out here.

Once the oracle has posted the proof on-chain, anyone is permitted to turn the crank and verify the proof. If a malicious oracle tries to submit a false proof, it will be rejected on-chain during the proof verification.

Switchboard’s VRF implementation uses the VRF counter and the recent blockhash as the VRF input to prevent oracles from gaining an unfair advantage. Unfortunately, this means that just like any other blockchain VRF protocol, there exists a collusion vector between the oracle and the block-producer, however, it is much more secure than simply using the blockhash on its own on its own for randomness!

Should I use XYZ for Randomness?​

Many projects attempt to derive “randomness” from the latest blockhash. Unfortunately, while very low-cost, this is extremely insecure against an adversary with the ability to influence transaction ordering. Slot leaders could easily exploit your game or protocol by adding noise to the blocks they produce to result in “random” data favorable to themselves. With the advent of MEV tech such as Flashbots, Jito Labs, and proposer-builder-separation, this attack vector may become more accessible to unsophisticated adversaries.

Another risk to be aware of is improper VRFs, such as those based on non-deterministic signature schemes, like EdDSA. See @colludingnode’s thread for more details.

A few examples where VRF could have mitigated exploits:

How Do I Integrate Switchboard VRF?​

We have a number of resources to get started!

· 3 min read
gallynaut

Since inception, Switchboard was built with a primary goal in mind: democratize data feeds such that any developer can build, configure, and own their data on-chain. By enabling developers and lowering the barrier of entry for bringing data on-chain, we will help foster the next wave of applications for Web 3.

Background​

Blockchains cannot communicate with Web 2 services and need an intermediary to facilitate this exchange. Solana programs need an oracle service to fetch and pre-populate the data on-chain before it can be used by a program. A fault tolerant data feed should have multiple off-chain sources defined, which can be time consuming for developers to seek out and configure.

Publisher​

Enter the Publisher.

app.switchboard.xyzapp.switchboard.xyz

The Publisher is a decentralized data catalog, giving data feed publishers (typically developers) a convenient interface to find and build data feeds. The Publisher includes a catalog of curated job definitions from a wide array of sources ranging from FTX, Coinbase, ESPN, or even Weather.com.

Examples of data sources for price feedsExamples of data sources for price feeds

This streamlines the data feed creation process and allows a developer to publish a data feed on-chain in under 60 seconds! The Publisher also includes a Feed Builder to build and test custom job definitions in a simple to use drag-n-drop interface. After a publisher has created their feeds on-chain, they can monitor and fund their data feed on the My Feeds dashboard.

Drag-n-drop interfaceDrag-n-drop interface

Curator​

The new Publisher decentralizes the data catalog and gives anybody the opportunity to contribute and get rewarded. Curators are incentivized to scour the internet and find unique data points that could be of interest to the broader community.

Steps of a Curator

  1. Finds a new data point

  2. Build job definition in the Publisher

  3. Add it to the decentralized catalog

Incentives for a Curator

The curator’s token wallet receives a kickback from any revenue generated from a job definition, or anytime when a data feed is funded with the curator’s job definition. This incentivizes the community to contribute and grow the Switchboard data catalog and help enable web3 developers.

Conclusion​

The Publisher is an exciting milestone for Switchboard because it opens up the data catalog to the community and allows anyone to contribute and get rewarded.

Switchboard is excited to bring further decentralization to the oracle space and welcome any feedback from the community. We’re excited to see what the community will build with it next; give us a ring, our line is open!

References & links Introduction | Switchboard Switchboard is a multi-chain oracle network that allows anyone to publish general purpose data feeds on-chain…docs.switchboard.xyz Join Switchboard’s Discord server! Join Switchboard's Discord to meet like-minded developers, participate in our DAO & community events!discord.gg @switchboardxyz | Linktree #PluggedinbySwitchboardlinktr.ee

· 3 min read
gallynaut

Switchboard V2 SDK is Here!​

github.com/switchboard-xyz/switchboard-v2

The Switchboard V2 SDK is here and includes the necessary tools to help you integrate Switchboard into your on-or-off chain applications. The SDK includes libraries for Typescript/Javascript, Python, and Rust, as well as example programs demonstrating how to read and interact with Switchboard V2. Below is the current overview of the Github repo structure:

Current Switchboard V2 SDK LayoutCurrent Switchboard V2 SDK Layout

Setup​

Clone the repository

git clone [https://github.com/switchboard-xyz/switchboard-v2.git](https://github.com/switchboard-xyz/switchboard-v2.git) && cd switchboard-v2

Then, install and link the dependencies

yarn install
yarn workspaces run build
yarn workspace @switchboard-xyz/switchboardv2-cli link
anchor build && node ./scripts/setup-example-programs.js

Finally, test the example programs

anchor test

Localnet Integration​

The SDK supports copying a Switchboard devnet environment to your localnet environment for integration testing. This is useful if you want to see how your program will react to Switchboard data feed updates.

First, change the cluster to localnet in Anchor.toml.

Next, create a Switchboard devnet queue and oracle.

sbv2 localnet:env --keypair ../payer-keypair.json -o .switchboard

This command will output:

  • start-local-validator.sh: starts a local Solana validator with the Switchboard program, IDL, and our devnet environment pre-loaded

  • start-oracle.sh: start a Switchboard oracle and start heartbeating on the localnet queue

  • docker-compose.yml: docker file with the Switchboard oracle environment

  • switchboard.env: contains your Switchboard accounts

In three separate shells, run the following commands in this order:

  • .switchboard/start-local-validator.sh

  • .switchboard/start-oracle.sh

  • anchor test --skip-local-validator

The anchor tests are configured to first fetch the account info for the Switchboard DAO controlled devnet permissionless queue. If the account info is not found, it assumes a localnet connection and looks for the switchboard.env with your Switchboard environment specific public keys. If a .switchboard directory or switchboard.env file is not found in the root project directory, it will look 2 levels higher until giving up.

Uniswap & SushiSwap Task Types​

Switchboard has added the UniswapExchangeRateTask and SushiSwapExchangeRateTask to resolve the swap price of assets on Uniswap and SushiSwap. These new task types will allow Solana protocols to offer DeFi products using data sourced from Ethereum.

xStepPriceTask​

Switchboard also ported over the xStepPriceTask from Switchboard V1 to Switchboard V2. The following is an example of how to use the new task type:

SplTokenParseTask & SplStakePoolTask​

Switchboard has added the SplTokenParseTask and SplStakePoolTask to resolve on-chain data in your Switchboard feeds. This will allow developers to build data feeds using live on-chain data. The following is an example of how to fetch the total token supply of the MonkeeDao stake pool:

Publisher​

The publisher got a facelift

… more details soon™!

app.switchboard.xyz

Conclusion​

The Switchboard V2 SDK is here to help developers integrate Switchboard into their applications. We welcome any PRs or feedback from the community!