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AP reports US election results via Ethereum blockchain

developer.ap.org

1–10 of 25 posts

Re: AP reports US election results via Ethereum blockchain

#3
post #2

Surprised they didn't use Chainlink. In fact, I can't even find any references to this "Everipedia OraQle". What is it?

Why? There's no need to use some game-theoretic machine for getting data when you can just get it direct from the source.

Re: AP reports US election results via Ethereum blockchain

#8
post #6

...why?

Such data sources on blockchains are called “oracles” and used for many applications such as:

* prediction markets

* bettings

* games

* distributed autonomous organization (DAO) governance

* minting nun-fungible tokens such as commemorative coins

* anything else you could program

Re: AP reports US election results via Ethereum blockchain

#9
post #6

...why?

Smart contracts have a major hurdle called the 'Oracle problem'. In summary, it is hard to get data from the real world into the blockchain. Even if you put it there, why should anyone trust you. A way around this is to get many credible parties to input the 'state' from their perspective and then blend the inputs. Once you have a data stream that you can trust (relatively) on the blockchain, you can make non-custodial trustless (or trust-minimized) smart contracts (bets, predictions, derivatives, etc.) based on the original variable in the real world.

Re: AP reports US election results via Ethereum blockchain

#10
post #6

...why?

Bloomberg made boatloads of money by being the go-to provider of financial data infrastructure. Blockchain is littered with startups making that bet, but now quite serious players are making that bet too.

Regardless how far up the hype curve you think blockchain is, it's interesting that AP is leveraging its reputation to commit to a project in this emerging tech.

Idea is that oracles are that bridge between the physical and the blockchain worlds, and it's these interfaces that are always the problem for the blockchain idealists. Playing that bridge role relies on being a trusted source so people believe you won't just run away with their funds... a startup doesn't start with the reputation needed to pull that off, but someone like AP does. So it's an interesting competitive advantage for someone like AP to do this.

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