The Pyth Network, a real-time market data platform, has launched its Pull Oracle on Solana (SOL), according to the most recent updates shared with Finbold on June 17.
The launch marks a significant advancement for developers on the Solana mainnet-beta, as they can now access Pyth’s oracle prices by requesting updates from the Pythnet appchain.
While the Pyth push oracle will remain operational on Solana until June 30, 2024, the new pull oracle is poised to enhance reliability during periods of congestion and expand the number of available price feeds.
Overcoming the limitations of the Push Oracle
The initial version of the Pyth Network on Solana was built around a push oracle design, which received price inputs from data providers via Solana transactions, aggregated them on-chain, and then pushed the updated prices to the Solana environment every 400ms.
The Pyth push oracle became the most widely adopted decentralized finance (DeFi) oracle on Solana, but it had limitations during high volatility and congestion.
To address these issues, the Pyth Network contributors developed a new price oracle that employs a pull oracle design, known as Pythnet Price Feeds.
The new design ensures that the oracle only updates on-chain prices when specifically requested.
The benefits of the Pull Oracle
In a push oracle system, every price update must be pushed on-chain, often competing for bandwidth with other transactions.
The pull oracle design allows users to include these price updates in their transactions, ensuring they land during crucial periods.
Additionally, the price update frequency on Pythnet is higher than on Solana mainnet-beta during congestion.
Solana developers now also gain access to Pyth Benchmarks, a tool for querying historical Pyth prices, which is essential for accurate settlement and preventing frontrunning.
The Pythnet appchain supports more data providers per feed than the push oracle on Solana, enhancing reliability and security.
Oracle support in new Solana Virtual Machine environments
The introduction of the pull oracle paves the way for oracle support in new Solana Virtual Machine environments.
Pyth Network’s scalability allows it to send data cross-chain to new SVM instances, whether they are private or permissioned.
The Solana DeFi ecosystem has already begun transitioning to the Pyth pull oracle, which now receives 200,000 pull updates daily.
Current users include Kamino, Jupiter, Zeta Markets, Drift, Solend, Flash Trade, GooseFX, RainFi, PsyOptions, Mango Markets, Clone Protocol, Lifinity, and Bonfida.
These platforms benefit from the improved performance, reliability, and security provided by the new Pyth pull oracle, further strengthening their operations on Solana.