Trustworthy Blockchain Oracles: Review, Comparison, and Open Research Challenges

Abstract

The essence of blockchain smart contracts lies in the execution of business logic code in a decentralized architecture in which the execution outcomes are trusted and agreed upon by all the executing nodes. Despite the decentralized and trustless architectures of the blockchain systems, smart contracts on their own cannot access data from the external world. Instead, smart contracts interact with off-chain external data sources, called oracles, whose primary job is to collect and provide data feeds and input to smart contracts. However, there is always risk of oracles providing corrupt, malicious, or inaccurate data. In this paper, we analyze and present the notion of trust in the oracles used in blockchain ecosystems. We analyze and compare trust-enabling features of the leading blockchain oracle approaches, techniques, and platforms. Moreover, we discuss open research challenges that should be addressed to ensure secure and trustworthy blockchain oracles.