# Oracle Ecosystem Initiative - Acurast

The oracle problem is considered to be the Achilles heel of public blockchains. As more complex and intricate systems are built on permissionless blockchains, the importance of Oracles grew as well since most complex economic interactions require some external data source. Achieving a trustless and decentralized oracle solution is challenging,  and several approaches have emerged, with many of them reintroducing Trusted Third Parties (TTP) and thus undermining the permissionless design principles.

## The Current Challenge In The Ecosystem
The Polkadot ecosystem has seen multiple attempts to establish a feasible oracle solution, e.g., Chainlink announcing the support of a Pallet for Substrate (Polkadot SDK) chains. Unfortunately, in this example, the agreed upon support was never established in a production setting and the maintenance and support of the Pallet  was discontinued.

Even though there exist oracle solutions (e.g., Redstone, Chainlink) covering multiple different environments, most of these solutions lack support and coverage of the Polkadot ecosystem.

It is time to establish a solution supporting Substrate (Polkadot SDK), EVM, and WASM. It is time for a feasible solution that does not rely on a centralized party or setup, but one that offers minimized trust assumptions based on strong cryptography and the latest advances in secure hardware, offering the flexibility to seamlessly expand new price feeds without additional roadblocks. 

## About Acurast
[Acurast](https://docs.acurast.com/) provides a zero trust, off-chain Execution Layer based on secure mobile hardware to create a trustless and confidential computation environment. In connection with a Substrate (Polkadot SDK) based chain responsible for permissionless orchestration of computational request.

## Context of the proposal
1.	Establish an ecosystem-wide solution for oracles accessible in three distinct environments: Substrate (Polkadot SDK), EVM and WASM
2.	Provide price feeds for all Polkadot and Kusama assets, other popular crypto assets and Real-World Assets (RWA).
3.	Establish an ecosystem-wide solution with these integrations that can be leveraged by every Polkadot-based project, utilizing a third-party audited solution.
4.	Provide support to projects to integrate price feeds into their environments
5.	Add support for new asset classes as price feeds.
6.	Provide access to larger off-chain compute resources for additional use cases.

## Voices From The Ecosystem

Some ecosystem feedback on this proposal:

“Given how Tanssi is building an infrastructure protocol to facilitate appchain deployments as much as possible, tools like oracles are essential for many use cases within the ecosystem. Acurast standardizing oracle solutions via a pallet will allow developers to include price feeds within their runtimes in a practical way, and it's highly complementary to what we're building at Tanssi.”  
Francisco Javier Agosti, Founder and CEO of Moondance Labs

“Acurast and Astar have been collaborating, in adding support for price feeds through Acurast and bringing them to Astar. An ecosystem wide solution, like Acurast is proposing, will not only improve the developer experience on Astar EVM and WASM but the broader Polkadot ecosystem.”  
Maarten Henskens, Head of Astar Foundation

**[We would love to get your feedback on this proposal. Find more details in the full proposal](https://drive.google.com/file/d/19a8edZHF_9c5QIqj9-T2WREEx7zEXQ3v/view?usp=drive_link)**

Oracle Ecosystem Initiative

Problem Statement:
- The oracle problem is a challenge in the Polkadot ecosystem, as existing oracle solutions lack support and coverage for the ecosystem, and many reintroduce trusted third parties, undermining the permissionless design principles.

Significance:
- Establishing a feasible oracle solution that supports Substrate (Polkadot SDK), EVM, and WASM is crucial for enabling complex economic interactions and maintaining trustless and decentralized systems.

Proposed Solution:
- Acurast provides a zero trust, off-chain Execution Layer based on secure mobile hardware, offering a trustless and confidential computation environment. It aims to establish an ecosystem-wide solution for oracles accessible in Substrate (Polkadot SDK), EVM, and WASM environments.

Expected Outcomes:
- Acurast aims to provide price feeds for all Polkadot and Kusama assets, other popular crypto assets, and real-world assets (RWA). It also aims to offer support for integrating price feeds into projects, adding support for new asset classes, and providing access to larger off-chain compute resources.

#2016 Oracle Ecosystem Initiative