What is a decentralized oracle network (DON)? Before Chainlink, oracles were highly centralized & insecure. Oracle attacks were common, leading to app exploits & loss of funds. Chainlink solved this with decentralized oracle networks (DONs) ↓ A DON is made up of a collection of independent oracle nodes. Each node is responsible for retrieving and validating inputs/outputs from different offchain or onchain sources. The nodes’ responses are then aggregated into a single, validated answer (i.e., oracle report), which can be consumed in a push or pull-based manner. Push-based oracles post an updated oracle report onchain at a set frequency (e.g., every minute or every 1% change in price). Pull-based oracles store new oracle reports offchain, and users can bring them onchain at any time. The oracle report can be used to trigger onchain applications across any blockchain, as well as be consumed by any offchain system needing highly reliable, provably accurate outputs. For example, if an onchain app needs the price of BTC/USD to power a DeFi use case like lending, it uses a DON to fetch data from multiple APIs and reach consensus on a reliable, tamper-proof answer. In contrast, trusting a single oracle pulling data from a single API introduces single points of failure. The decentralized architecture of Chainlink DONs supports: • Superior security, reliability, and data accuracy • A system-agnostic design (works with any chain/any data) • Flexibility over how data is fetched, aggregated, and delivered But this is only the beginning. Chainlink recently introduced the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), which is designed to empower developers to build with Chainlink faster, more easily, and with more reach and flexibility than ever before. Inspired by microservices architecture, CRE distills oracle services into distinct, modular capabilities (e.g., read chain, perform consensus, etc.), each secured by independent DONs. Developers will be able to combine these capabilities into custom workflows that run in a decentralized manner. The result is the ability to combine any data, computation, blockchain, and system into a unified application that can be easily adapted to support different capabilities. Write once, deploy everywhere. Learn more about this next step in Chainlink’s evolution here: https://blog.chain.link/introducing-chainlink-runtime-environment/