Oracles

A vital part of the Astral protocol is the integration of an Oracle system that can trustlessly fetch spatial data from multiple sources into smart contracts.

Spatial data from a range of sources - satellites, IoT devices, vehicles, mobile phones, and more - can be very useful, but is prone to failure and subject to cheating. Due to the potential spatial economies that can be built with our protocol, it is paramount to have trust in the spatial data submitted to the blockchain. We're researching ways to ensure this trust at the Data and Oracle layers of the Astral stack.

Taking the example of the GPS data, it is widely known how spoofable the system is. The usage of a protocol such as FOAM in combination with GPS data can provide a more reliable and trustless measure of the position of an object or a person in the real world. Combined with other methods of validating one's position, such as biometrics, it is possible to reduce to a great extent the possibility to cheat the system.

In addition to the different data sources, the usage of multiple Oracle networks, such as Chainlink or API3, as the gateway to the Astral Protocol will further reduce the possibility of mutability of the data and the potential of failure of any of the aforementioned networks.