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  • Abstract
  • Introduction
  • API Connectivity Problem
    • 1.1 Oracle problem: A source-agnostic misinterpretation
    • 1.2 Decentralized APIs
  • Issues with Third-Party Oracles as Middlemen
  • Airnode: A Node Designed for First-Party Oracles
    • 1.1Benefits of disintermediation
      • Off-chain signing of data
    • 1.2 Barriers to API providers operating oracles
    • 1.3 Airnode features
    • 1.4 Airnode protocol
    • 1.5 API integrations
  • Decentralizing Governance through Tokenomics
    • Centralized oracle network governance
    • Management of funds
    • OracleMesh DAO
    • dAPI monetization and API provider compensation
    • OM3 tokenomics
  • Conclusion
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  1. Airnode: A Node Designed for First-Party Oracles

1.3 Airnode features

Airnode is a fully-serverless oracle node that is designed specifically for API providers to operate their own oracles. It addresses all of the oracle node-related problems in Section 1.2:

  1. It does not require any specific know-how to operate. In fact, it is difficult to even speak of an operation, as Airnode is designed to be completely set and forget.

  2. It does not require any day-to-day maintenance such as updating the operating system or monitoring the node for uptime owing to existing fully managed serverless technology. It is designed to be stateless, which makes it extremely resilient against any problem that can cause permanent downtime and require node operator intervention.

  3. It is built on services priced on-demand, meaning that the node operator is charged only as much as their node is used. This allows any API provider to run an oracle for free and start paying only after they start generating revenue.

  4. It does not require the node operator to handle cryptocurrency at all. Its protocol is designed in a way that the requester covers all gas costs.

One way to see Airnode is as a lightweight wrapper around a Web API that allows it to communicate with smart contract platforms with no overhead or payment token friction. Regarding the level of involvement required from the API provider, using Airnode can be likened to utilizing an API gateway that makes an API accessible over the Web, rather than operating a blockchain node as a side-business. In fact, our aim is for Airnode to become as ubiquitous and mundane for APIs as using an API gateway, which will make a vast variety of first-party oracles available to OracleMesh.

API providers invest significant resources to build a highly available infrastructure. Then, it is important for the oracle node implementation to not contain single points of failure that may cause downtime. Existing solutions using third-party oracles depend on over-redundancy at the oracle level to cover for this. OracleMesh envisions each API to only be served by its first-party oracle, which means the redundancy has to be implemented at the level of the individual Airnode. The node being fully-serverless enables this to be done easily across different availability zones of a single cloud provider, or even across multiple cloud providers. It should also be mentioned that it will be possible to containerize Airnode and operate it on-premises, yet using the serverless version will be recommended for almost all use cases.

Airnode is developed by the founding members of OracleMesh and is now open-sourced1 .

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Last updated 1 year ago