Oracle Machine Track: Seeking the Second Rise Curve

The Oracle Machine is a key service mechanism in blockchain systems, used to bring off-chain data into smart contracts. Essentially, the core competitiveness of Oracle Machine projects mainly manifests in the following four aspects: comprehensiveness and credibility of data acquisition, acquisition of exclusive data and value capture, security and decentralization of verification mechanisms, and transmission efficiency and network robustness.

It is expected that by 2030, the overall market size of the Oracle Machine sector will be between $13.8 billion and $23.1 billion. Chainlink is the absolute leader in the Oracle Machine sector, with rich data sources and extensive project collaborations; Pyth has advantages in transmission speed and financial data acquisition; Redstone is currently the only Oracle Machine that has both Push and Pull pricing methods.

In the future, Oracle Machines will no longer overly rely on providing price feed services for DeFi projects, and RWA is expected to become a strong second rise curve for the Oracle Machine track. DePIN, AI, and DeSci businesses have the opportunity to combine with the data services of Oracle Machines, becoming new momentum for the revenue growth of Oracle Machines, allowing industry growth to shift from 2 to N.

1. The Development History of the Oracle Machine

The concept of the Oracle Machine can be traced back to 2014, when the Augur project proposed the need for decentralized prediction markets. In 2015, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin officially introduced the Oracle Machine concept, emphasizing its key role in enabling smart contracts to obtain external data. That same year, Oraclize(, now known as Provable), launched the first decentralized Oracle Machine service, supporting Ethereum smart contracts in acquiring external data.

In 2017, the Chainlink project was established, proposing the concept of a decentralized Oracle Machine network (DON), aimed at solving the single point of failure problem. With the arrival of DeFi Summer in 2020, oracles emerged as the core external data service providers for DeFi, offering price feed services to decentralized applications. Due to the explosive demand, oracle projects beyond Chainlink, such as Band Protocol and Tellor, were launched one after another, revealing the initial competitive landscape.

In 2022-2023, the DeFi market entered an adjustment period, but the Oracle Machine track continued to innovate. Cross-chain interoperability and modular blockchain became industry trends, with Oracle Machine services expanding to multi-chain and multi-scenario applications. Chainlink launched the cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP), supporting cross-chain data transmission and smart contract interaction. Pyth Network( focuses on financial data Oracle Machine) mainnet launch, attracting participation from multiple traditional financial institutions.

In 2024-2025, Oracle Machine services will expand from DeFi to areas such as gaming, NFTs, insurance, and more. DePIN applications will start to have more demand for IoT Oracle Machines. The combination of AI and Oracle Machines will explore new scenarios for the automated execution of smart contracts.

2. Oracle Machine track market size

By the end of 2024, the total market value of the Oracle Machine project is $10.55 billion, accounting for 11.8% of the total DeFi market value of $(912.68 billion $). Compared to early 2021 when the market value of Oracle Machines once accounted for over 25% of DeFi, this proportion has significantly decreased. The core reason for this change is that new models like re-staking have expanded the industry boundaries of DeFi, but compared to other inherent DeFi sub-sectors, the "necessity" of Oracle Machines remains solid.

Based on Grand View Research's prediction for the DeFi market, the compound annual growth rate from 2025 to 2030 is approximately 53%, with a market value reaching $231 billion by 2030. This article introduces two hypothetical scenarios of "steady share" and "declining share" to estimate the Oracle Machine market space:

• Optimistic scenario: If the Oracle Machine market size can maintain 10% of the DeFi market size, it will reach $23.1 billion by 2030.

• Neutral scenario: The Oracle Machine market size maintains 6-8% of the DeFi market size, which will amount to 13.8-18.4 billion dollars by 2030.

The prediction model calculates the potential market value of the Oracle Machine using the method of "market cap share × total DeFi market cap", which not only reflects its dependence on the rise of DeFi but also takes into account the trend of the independent growth rate of the Oracle Machine industry gradually slowing down relative to DeFi.

3. Major Projects in the Oracle Machine Track

The current landscape of the Oracle Machine industry can be described as dominated by one player. In terms of token market capitalization and total value secured (TVS) (, Chainlink is the absolute leader in this field. As of March 2025, the TVS of the Chainlink project is $31 billion, accounting for 53.3% of the total TVS in the Oracle Machine sector, while its token market capitalization is $9.6 billion, making up 76.9% of the total market capitalization in the Oracle Machine sector. Besides Chainlink, projects like Pyth Network, UMA, and API3 have also carved out a niche in the Oracle Machine space due to their advantages in low latency, verification mechanisms, and data acquisition.

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) 3.1 Chainlink

Chainlink is the absolute leader in the Oracle Machine track. Founded in 2017, it is one of the earliest Oracle Machine projects. Chainlink provides services such as price feeds (Data Feed), automation ###Automation(, verifiable random functions )VRF(, and cross-chain operations )CCIP(. In 2024, in terms of revenue composition, the income from price feed services accounts for the highest proportion of the project’s revenue, making up 95% of total revenue, with DeFi protocols as its main service targets. The revenue proportion from the other three types of services totals 5%. The income from automation services and cross-chain services both accounts for 2%, while the income from random number generation services is less than 1%.

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)# 3.1.1 Chainlink price feed service

The price feed is one of the most traditional services of Oracle Machine. As one of the earliest decentralized Oracle Machine projects, Chainlink's price feed service does not directly obtain prices from third-party APIs, but instead acquires data through data nodes. Taking the example of obtaining the real-time price of ETH/USDT from a lending platform, a user's on-chain transaction request will trigger a smart contract, which will call Chainlink's Oracle Machine service to obtain the latest price data. Chainlink's Oracle Machine does not get information directly from a single data source, but instead gathers data from multiple independent nodes sourced from various quality data aggregators. The nodes perform local aggregation and cleansing of this data before submitting it to the chain.

Then, Chainlink's aggregation contract will filter and calculate the weighted average of the data reported by all nodes again to derive a final on-chain price for smart contract calls. In this process, the Oracle Machine nodes are composed of independent operators. After the lending platform uses this price data, it will pay $LINK tokens to the Chainlink network as a service fee through a smart contract.

3.1.2 Chainlink Automation

Automation( automation) is another important revenue-generating business of the Chainlink project. In 2021, Chainlink launched the Keeper trading automation service. Keeper is an external account### EOA( that can trigger smart contracts to execute based on predefined conditions under certain economic incentives. Keepers use off-chain computation to execute the same smart contract functions as on-chain. Once the function returns true, Keepers initiate an on-chain transaction to call the on-chain smart contract function. In practical applications, Keepers can be used to automatically execute actions triggered by specific events, such as minting NFTs, rebalancing liquidity supply, yield aggregation, and loan repayment, etc. Keeper is also the most important product of the Chainlink project during the Automation 1.0 era.

In 2024, Chainlink launched Automation 2.0. Automation 2.0 introduces cryptographic consensus in decentralized off-chain computing, transferring expensive computation verification from the blockchain network to off-chain networks. Developers can increase the uptime of their dApps, reduce costs, and simplify the user experience. Savings on gas fees and improvements in computational performance will lead more developers to choose Chainlink's Automation 2.0 solution.

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)# 3.1.3 Chainlink Cross-Chain Protocol

In 2021, Chainlink released the cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP), which is a new open-source standard for cross-chain protocols. This protocol provides developers of smart contracts with a general infrastructure that has computational capabilities, allowing for the transmission of data and smart contract instructions across various blockchain networks. CCIP will become the underlying protocol for various cross-chain services, including Chainlink's programmable token bridge, enabling users to securely and efficiently transfer tokens to any blockchain network, with scalability.

For example, if a user expects to transfer 1,000 USDT assets from Sui to Solana, the key point is that the cross-chain bridge can verify that the user actually has 1,000 USDT on the Sui chain. The Chainlink network, with its vast and decentralized node network, has strong advantages in cross-chain verification and data relaying, making it very suitable for such cross-chain scenarios that require high security.

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)# 3.1.4 Chainlink Verifiable Random Function

Verifiable Random Function is a cryptographic function that generates pseudo-random numbers based on data input and attaches a proof that anyone can verify. Chainlink VRF adopts Goldberg's Verifiable Random Function (VRF). Chainlink VRF generates one or more random numbers for each random number request, along with a cryptographic proof of the random number. This proof is published on-chain and verified on-chain, and the random number will only be used after verification. Chainlink VRF has covered multiple blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, and BSC. In February 2022, VRF V2 was officially launched, which is a brand new upgraded version of VRF, featuring more powerful performance and higher security.

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)# 3.1.5 Chainlink Enterprise Privacy Data Services

As one of the earliest Oracle Machine projects, Chainlink has already formed a relatively strong moat in price feeding services, but its expansion into other areas has not stagnated. There has been a significant rise in automation, cross-chain protocols, verifiable random numbers, and other aspects. In addition, there are a large number of entities that require point-to-point transmission of privacy data. To meet this demand, many startups focus on privacy data, employing methods such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC), Zero Knowledge Proof ###Zero Knowledge Proof(, Homomorphic Encryption )HE(, Trusted Execution Environment )TEE(, Federated Learning, and others. Chainlink's powerful verification network can ensure the security and timeliness of privacy data transmission.

Chainlink provides businesses the opportunity to sell data and API services to the blockchain environment, enabling various functions such as on-chain privacy data, off-chain computation of contract logic, and on-chain trading of private data. In November 2024, Chainlink announced the completion of a pilot program with the Global Banking Financial Telecommunication Association )SWIFT( and Swiss banking giant UBS Group )UBS(. The pilot project tested tokenized fund settlements among parties, including options for traditional financial systems to interact with the digital economy without using cryptocurrencies.

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