Pythiad #8: Powering Up
Welcome to the 8th installment of the Pythiad, the Pyth Network newsletter!
For those who missed Pythiad #1, Pythiad #2, Pythiad #3, Pythiad #4, Pythiad #5, Pythiad #6 or Pythiad #7 be sure to check them out. We covered just about the entire history of the Pyth network until today!
To our followers: thank you for all your support, feedback, and good vibes! And to our newcomers, we say welcome.
We are delighted to have you on board. As always, there is much to discuss.
Coming Up
- Pyth Developments
- Pyth End-Users
- Pyth Publishers
- Pyth Metrics
- Pythian Community
Pyth Developments
Pyth Publisher Metrics
On the 15th of February, the Pyth network released its publisher metrics, a new analytics feature on the Pyth website providing insights into the historical performance of the network’s data sources to empower developers, publishers, and delegators. This powerful tool reflects our commitment to transparency and delivering timely, accurate, and valuable first-party data for everyone.
Check out our blog post to learn more.
TL;DR:
- Developers benefit from granular insight into Pyth’s data performance and publishers’ track records
- Publishers benefit from new analytics and monitoring capabilities.
- Delegators will benefit from increased transparency on publisher data quality, which can better inform their staking decisions
Pyth Pathway by Figment
We are excited to announce that Pyth Pathway is live on Figment Learn. This program is a result of Figment’s close collaboration with Pyth to make its data more functional and accessible.
The Pyth 101 Pathway is a simple guide for developers who want to leverage Pyth’s data for DeFi applications. Within the pathway, you will learn how to set up the environment required to operate (i.e. Install Pyth Client, DataHub), how to connect to Pyth on Solana, and consume on-chain data (streaming prices). You will get a general overview of the network (outlined in the whitepaper) and explanations of Pyth’s core features, such as the Confidence Interval.
To get started, please check out this video using the Pyth Pathway on Gitpod.
Read Pyth Pathway by Figment Learn Blog here.
Symbology Update
Pyth’s Symbology update has been deployed to the Solana mainnet without any impact on any feeds. As a reminder, the Symbology update addresses the clashing between US equities and crypto ticker pairs, such as STEP/USD (crypto, equity), UST/USD (crypto, equity), and SBR/USD (crypto, equity). These changes enable scalability and assure builders of what asset is linked to an account.
Full details in our docs: Account Structure & Product Metadata.
Pyth Media Kit
The Pyth Media Kit is now available. You can access it from our website footer or directly here: https://pyth.network/brand-assets/.
Take fate into your own hands! Our guidelines offer a simple framework for promoting the Pyth network in marketing communications.
Pyth End-Users
Convergence Hackathon
The Convergence Hackathon (3rd Jan — 15th Feb), which gathered close to 800 participants and 100 submissions, announced its final verdict!
Results were shared during the Serum x Wormhole Twitter Space. The full details available are here. Among them is qPools, winner of the $30K Pyth award prize. Congratulations!
qPools is a risk-adjusted yield protocol with which you can provide liquidity to several DEXes, each generating passive yields through trading fees. Pyth is used for the price calculations of the QPT token with regard to the reserve.
Honorable mentions: Furo, Dropcopy, BaLex, Indexaro, Companion.to, and Fruit Basket More details in our thread.
Solana Riptide Hackathon
Solana Riptide (2nd February — 17th March 2022) is an online hackathon with $5M+ in prizes and funding for winning teams. There are 5 majors track across this hackathon:
- Payments presented by Visa
- DeFi presented by Jump Crypto
- Web3 presented by Google
- Gaming presented by Samsung and TSM
- DAOs presented by Mango Markets and MonkeDAO
In addition to these 5 tracks, 28 projects decided to also individually sponsor Riptide with a prize of $30K USD up for grabs. Among the sponsors, we have of course the Pyth network, as well as its partners! Bonfida, Drift Protocol, Jet Protocol, Mango Markets, Serum, Solend, Wormhole, Zeta Markets, 01 Exchange, and Tulip.
Want to build something cool for Riptide? Pyth network’s published some brilliant hackathon ideas — you can find them here.
Got questions or need support? Come find us in our Discord.
New Integrations
As a reminder, we may not be aware of all programs leveraging Pyth — if you are using Pyth data, please let us know so we can support you! ****
Ideal is a decision intelligence firm that helps trading teams optimize their performance. Ideal solutions illuminate meaningful insights and clear action steps, empowering users to take proactive action today to stay ahead tomorrow. This first official off-chain integration demonstrates well the quality of the network data and its capacity to serve both on and off-chain programs.
Zeta FLEX is a permissionless protocol enabling customizable options creation and auctions. The program incorporates Pyth’s price feeds to automatically settle contracts. In other words, any program that would build upon the infrastructure from Zeta would automatically have Pyth integrated.
As of today, Katana has already announced its official integration of Zeta FLEX and Pyth feeds! Another leading DOV: Ribbon Finance has launched its product on Solana thanks to Zeta FLEX too.
Snowflake is the first automation platform on Solana offering both a smart contract scheduling infrastructure for developers and a composable Zapier-like dApp for DeFi users to compose all kinds of on-chain automation. Snowflake released a price trigger function based upon Pyth’s price feeds. For more details, you may refer to the Snowflake docs as well as check their YouTube demonstration.
Citrus is a cross-chain exchange enabling swapping tokens from various chains (ETH, Polygon, Terra, BSC…) directly into native SOL tokens. Citrus Lending focuses on providing users the utility of being able to borrow and lend against many major cross-chain assets natively on Solana in one shared pool.
Check out Pyth’s other end-users!
Pyth Publishers
New publishers emerge and join the Pyth parade:
- AAX is a cryptocurrency exchange powered by LSEG Technology’s Millennium Exchange — the same matching engine that powers London Stock Exchange. It is also the first of its kind to have joined the London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) Partner Platform.
- Launched in November 2019, AAX Exchange now serves more than 100 crypto-to-crypto trading pairs to over 2 million users spread over 100 countries.
- Three Arrows Capital, established in 2012 in Singapore by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, has become a leading voice in the crypto ecosystem.
- Three Arrows Capital focused on quantitative FX, Options, Equities, and Crypto trading before eventually fully pivoting to crypto in 2018.
- Founded in 1997, the firm established its first tech-based solution to optimize options trading. Over the past two decades, the same formula has been used across a range of industries, asset classes, and business stages to consistently deliver superior results.
- Headquartered in the heart of financial markets in Chicago, PEAK6’s core brands include PEAK6 Capital Management, PEAK6 Strategic Capital, Apex Fintech Solutions, PEAK6 InsurTech, Evil Geniuses and Poker Power.
- G-Research is Europe’s leading quantitative finance research firm
- G-Research utilizes machine learning, big data, and some of the most advanced technology available to predict movements in a range of financial markets
- Amberdata delivers comprehensive data and insights into blockchain networks, crypto markets, and decentralized finance, as well as empowers financial institutions with data for research, trading, risk, analytics, reporting, and compliance.
- Existing partners of Amberdata are LMAX, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitfinex and Binance among others.
Check out our Publishers page to see the full roster.
Pyth Metrics
Total Value Secured
One of the most important metrics is the Total Value Secured (TVS) by the Pyth network price feeds — a metric showing how important Pyth is for others. Whether you are a borrow-lending protocol or you do synthetics, price feeds are critical. At the end of February 2022, approximately $1.6B was secured by Pyth feeds.
When possible, smart contracts are verified in-depth to confirm the utilization of the Pyth network; this is part of running fair assessments. Otherwise, Pyth data is natively available on Solana and (therefore) permissionlessly queryable; we may not know all programs leveraging Pyth!
If you are using Pyth data, let us know! We’d be happy to support and broadcast you on our website!
Trading Volume
Consider the amount of trading volume that depends on Pyth’s data. Each protocol has its own Pyth integration: perpetual contracts using a CLOB or a vAMM use Pyth as their index reference to set the funding rate. Synthetics platforms use Pyth price feeds as the exchange rate basis for swaps in between synthetic assets. Futures or Options protocols (specifically DOVs) are integrating Pyth feeds for their options or futures settlement.
Pyth price feeds played a crucial role for these protocols and enabled over $3.7B in volume traded.
Publishers
Data is king, and the Pyth network stands committed to onboarding only high-quality data sources and establishing a direct bridge — without any middlemen — between these sources and the blockchain. As of today, the Pyth network has attracted 46 publishers to the network (45 excluding Amberdata on March 1st).
NPM & Rust Downloads
Pyth network is open-sourced and its data is freely queryable.
A way to check on Pyth network’s adoption rate is to look up the NPM & Rust downloads. NPM (“Node Package Manager”) is the default package manager for JavaScript’s runtime Node.js, which is needed whenever you want to integrate Pyth on your website frontend.
A (rust) crate is a binary or library. The crate root is a source file that the Rust compiler starts from and makes up the root module of your crate. This enables you to call on-chain data and make your protocol works.
Something has been awakening since December, and the trend looks like ‘up only’.
Pythian Community
Singapore Hacker House
The Solana Foundation x Zeta Markets Hacker House was held over 6 days in Singapore (Feb 15–20) and saw hundreds of participants meeting face to face. During the event, a short Pyth network crash course presentation was given. Those in the hacker house will also remember a Zeta x Pyth panel that focused on Solana infrastructure!
One more Hacker House is taking place this week (March 1–6) in Prague. On top of this, many more events are in the pipeline, so stay tuned — wink wink New York Hacker House (Mar 14–18).
Twitter Spaces
Throughout February, Pythians have gathered in Twitter Spaces with teams that have either integrated the Pyth feeds or contributed data to the network.
- Pyth x Zeta (27th Jan)
- Pyth x Serum (3rd Feb)
- Pyth x Drift (8th Feb)
- Pyth x Token Damo (18th Feb)
- Pyth x Katana (23rd Feb)
- Pyth x Crypto RoundUp Africa (24th Feb)
- Pyth x MarginFi (1st Mar)
- Pyth x Burnt Finance (1st Mar)
More Spaces will come in March with other amazing teams, so stay tuned!
In addition to Spaces, March may see the first-ever Discord Townhall for the Pythians, so be sure to join our Discord.
Pythian Quiz
Twice a month, Pythians Discord members competed in Quizzes about the Pyth network. Each time, even the top minds win a sub-set of possible prizes. Our 8th quiz concluded on Feb 28, had about 300 participants. Only two of them have scored 100% this time. Will you be up to the challenge for the 9th Pyth Quiz?
Flag Monkez & Pyth NFTs
This month saw an NFT project: Flag Monkez. We are proud to be one of the 151 Solana projects Flag Monkez will create an NFT for.
Speaking of Pyth NFTs, we had a few proud Pythians exhibiting their collection.
Build in the open
In our quest to make high-quality first-party data available freely to everyone — not the case today in traditional markets or on-chain — it’s only logical for Pyth’s contributors to work out in the open, alongside the community. In this spirit, the Pyth repo has been open-source since Day 1.
Being open-source has a key advantage: anyone can start building with Pyth data without requesting access or permission.
Exhibit 1 is a JS developer stoked for collecting pricing data for mSOL/USD. Exhibit 2 is from a developer looking to learn more Solana by building “anchor-options”, a cash-settled European options protocol written in Rust/Anchor.
This is the end of Pythiad #8! We hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you very much for your time and support. Come find us on Twitter, Discord, or Telegram!
Pythiad #1: The Journey so Far
Pythiad #2: Liberating First-Party Data
Pythiad #3: Pyth Laboured in September
Pythiad #4: Ignition at a glance
Pythiad #5: Last straight before 2022
Pythiad #6: 2021 in Review — 2022 in Sight
Pythiad #7: A First-Party Financial Oracle
Future newsletters will continue to summarize Pyth’s monthly progress and exciting things
