Pyth’s Next Steps

Pyth has come a long way since day one. So what’s next?

TL;DR:

• Pyth is going cross-chain. Be on the lookout for Pyth data on 20 Wormhole-supported blockchains!
• The final iteration of the Pyth protocol, as laid out in the whitepaper, is designed to be a self-sustaining and fully decentralized network that coordinates data publishers and users.

Where We Are Now

Pyth has come a long way since day one. Our goal has always been simple yet ambitious: to make every asset price available on every blockchain. In doing so, we hope to empower data owners and data users in new, exciting ways.

Where are we now? Pyth has been publishing live prices for US equities, FX, metals, and of course, crypto since our deployment on Solana mainnet in August last year.

With over 80 price feeds supported by more than 70 best-in-class data providers across traditional and decentralized finance, we’ve grown considerably since our humble devnet days. And with Pyth now securing over half a billion in TVL and garnering over 550K client downloads, it’s safe to say that developers have taken a liking to what Pyth offers.

You’ll recognize many #PoweredByPyth applications: Solend, Mango Markets, Friktion, Zeta Markets, Drift, Backpack, Jet, and many more. Off-chain solutions, like OpenBB and SHIFT Search, and institutions like QCP and Geneva Trading, are also tapping into Pyth’s data.

It feels like we’ve summitted a great mountain over this past year. But that doesn’t mean our journey is anywhere near finished. As the next chapter for Pyth unfolds, the stakes will only get higher, and the Pythian community will become increasingly involved in the network’s operations. So, where do we go from here?

What’s Next?

Cross-Chain Data

Pyth data is going cross-chain. This should be no surprise to most readers. Pyth’s contributors have set their sights on a cross-chain future since the beginning.

Pyth is now live on mainnet on BNB Chain. Up next are all of your favorite L1s and L2s, including Ethereum, Polygon, Injective, NEAR, Avalanche, Fantom, Algorand, Arbitrum, Optimism, Aptos, Sui and more.

“If it’s fair game for Wormhole, it’s fair game for Pyth.”

There’s been constant knocking on the doors by builders from many blockchains. Pyth has already launched on BNB Chain with Venus. Ribbon Finance of Ethereum is already #PoweredByPyth on Solana, thanks to the composability of DeFi. Hashflow will soon leverage Pyth data on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, and BNB Chain. Developers widely recognize and desire the granularity, security, speed, diversity, and reliability of Pyth data.

For these same reasons, Pyth became the premier oracle for Solana DeFi. Developers in Solana choose Pyth data because no other oracle solution accesses more institutional-grade data from first-party sources who actively participate in price discovery. Furthermore, no other oracle solution updates as frequently as Pyth, protects users with confidence intervals, and upholds higher standards of oracle reliability, transparency, and data legality. No wonder Pyth now comprises over 90% of Solana’s addressable market (Total Value Secured or TVS).

We have a saying about Pyth: that with our data, developers can take fate into their own hands. Wherever you are in the wider crypto ecosystem, your destiny with Pyth awaits.

Cross-Chain via Wormhole: How Does It Work?

Publishers send their pricing data as transactions to the Pyth on-chain program. This is part of Pyth’s usual operations. In order to send its data to other blockchains, Pyth makes use of the Wormhole generic messaging protocol.

Prospective data users from any Wormhole-supported chain will be able to request Pyth prices from Wormhole. Upon request, Wormhole will attest the prices from Pyth and relay (or ‘message’) those prices to the Pyth contract deployed on that user’s native chain. Any protocol on that chain can request quotes at their desired frequency from the relevant Pyth contract.

This on-demand price update design enables cost reductions by making prices available on-chain only when they are needed. Furthermore, this design allows Pyth data users to benefit from one another’s requests, as a price update requested by one protocol will make that price available to everyone else on that chain.

Thanks to Pyth’s publisher network design — wherein data providers, are data owners or creators — Pyth has access to the latest, most timely data as inputs. Pyth’s price aggregation algorithm and the Pyth-Wormhole attestation process are designed to keep latency low and allow for a seamless oracle experience.

Completing the Network

The Pyth network has made substantial progress towards bringing valuable financial market data to the general public: the initial version of the protocol on Solana provides sub-second price updates for US equities, foreign currency pairs, commodities, and cryptocurrencies.

The future vision of the Pyth network, as architected in whitepaper, is one that is self-sustaining and completely decentralized. This new iteration of the Pyth protocol will consist of a system of mechanisms and incentives that coordinate participants in the network. These mechanisms will include data staking, reward distribution, and governance.

The current governance-related and cross-chain contracts are code-complete and audited. Our focus is now on utilizing Wormhole’s powerful technology for cross-chain governance. Innovation never stops.

We advise everyone to follow the Pyth official channels closely for more information and to read through the Pyth whitepaper if they haven’t already. If in doubt, consult the admins in our Discord and Telegram.

We can’t wait to hear what you think! You can join the Pyth Discord and Telegram, follow us on Twitter, and be the first to hear about what’s new in the Pyth ecosystem through our newsletter. You can also learn more about Pyth here.