Harbinger is a project that will be delivering signed price feeds to the Tezos network based on market data available from different exchanges. In a tweet posted yesterday, Luke Youngblood, Founder and CEO of Blockscale, announced the launch of Harbinger, which is a self-sustained Tezos price oracle. The good thing about Harbinger is that it lets you post signed price data received from several exchanges.
I'm happy to announce the launch of #Harbinger, a self-sustaining price oracle for #Tezos. Harbinger enables anyone to post signed price data from multiple exchanges, creating a foundational infrastructure that many #DeFi apps can be built on top of: https://t.co/1gia22hZQf 1/6
— LukeYoungblood.eth 🛡️ (@LukeYoungblood) August 25, 2020
Harbinger Price Oracle and Tezos
A cryptocurrency network with liquid proof of stake, Tezos allows account holders to delegate Tezos they have to baker or validator. Account holders help to secure the Tezos network and earn a certain share from the block rewards.
If we look at Harbinger, we find that here an account paying fees for updating the price oracle is allowed to be delegated as well as pre-funded using tez. This process facilitates the creation of self-sustaining price oracles, in which rewards for participation in proof of stake agreement offsets total fees necessary to maintain updated oracle data.
In the following section, we will explore the reasons why Harbinger price oracle is considered a crucial step towards the creation of the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) ecosystem over Tezos.
Harbinger—A Trustworthy Oracle
Harbinger consists of different reference contracts and tools which let anyone turn into a poster. These posters are allowed to deploy any price oracle over the Tezos network, which will be publishing prices that are cryptographically signed. Also, Harbinger has a reference signer who can be deployed by an exchange for providing signed price feeds that have compatibility with Harbinger.
Features of Harbinger
In Harbinger, market data is retrieved from an exchange and then it is signed using a private key. After that, prices can be retrieved by posted from the signer and then the prices are posted to the storage contract.
Also, a poster can initiate a storage contract callback, which will be pushing the price information onto a normalizer contract. Finally, a Decentralized Finance protocol can invoke a callback on normalizer contract, so that the latest price can be pushed onto their contract.
Harbinger Contracts
Harbinger Price Storage Contract
It is a reference contract that supports public key from the data provider and market order books that are configurable. This contract is used for storing the current price candle, which has been extracted from a specific signer. There is a revoke entry point that can be used if a signer gets compromised and inform the network that available signed prices cannot be trusted.
Harbinger Normalizer Contract
It uses a volume-weighted average for normalizing price data. The contract can be configured to select the data points that are to be normalized. Read the latest Tezos news and Harbinger Price Oracle news, analysis, and research, and learn more about recent updates on the XTZ news portal.
