Hey, everyone! Recently wandering around the crypto world, I got fascinated by this oracle track—it’s like the "intelligence officer" of blockchain, helping DeFi projects fetch external data in real-time. I particularly want to talk about this guy, Switchboard, which, as a rising star, is simply on another level in terms of speed: delays can be as low as sub-100ms, and in some scenarios even sub-10ms, which is several times faster than the big brother Pyth (with a delay of about 1.2 seconds)! Just imagine, in high-frequency trading or lending protocols, this little time difference can be life-saving! As someone who has been engaged in high-frequency trading for years, this really hits home—previously, when using some oracle for cross-chain arbitrage, I missed the best closing opportunity due to a delay of about 1 second, and ended up earning significantly less. Switchboard's sub-10ms delay is like equipping high-frequency strategies with an "accelerator," especially in the highly volatile crypto market, being a step faster means an extra layer of profit protection.
Now, it has quietly served over 50 top projects, such as Jito, Drift, and Kamino, safeguarding on-chain values close to 1 billion dollars. Moreover, its design is super open: anyone can customize data feeds for Web2 or Web3 assets without begging others, and it supports multi-chain interoperability. I believe this openness is the key to breaking industry monopolies—although Chainlink has a mature ecosystem, the barriers and costs for customizing data feeds are unfriendly to small and medium developers, while Switchboard allows ordinary people to participate in the data ecosystem construction, which will attract more innovative teams to join, such as niche asset derivatives protocols and personalized hedging tools, and we will likely see a wave of new plays emerge in the future.
Personally, I think this is not just a technical upgrade but can spark a wave of new plays, such as more complex cross-chain derivatives. The $SWTCH token quietly launched on Solana DEX and several major CEXs on September 9, last year, and its market cap is only a little over 6 million dollars. Compared to its potential, it feels like a great deal. The entire oracle market is boiling with excitement, Chainlink still dominates, but new players keep emerging. Who do you think will come out on top? Let's discuss your views, and feel free to vent or add more!
