Charli3 Oracles 📍Reliable, Secure, Trusted
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@Oraclecharli3
Cardano's Premier Oracle 👇Links to all social platforms👇 🎯https://t.co/gFYx1V3TmG🎯
I've been talking to a few projects about the Pyth oracle integration, except I wouldn't really call it that. At least not the way Charli3 was an oracle on Cardano. Pyth doesn't seem to have an actual Cardano integration. They provide a service where they give you an API feed, and then you can publish it on chain yourself. Why does this matter? The way an oracle should function is that is creates a reliable and independently generated feed you can use in your smart contract. The way to do that on Cardano in a trustless way is to publish it on chain somehow. When you have a UTxO that contains a datum with the price it can be used in a smart contract as a reference. When you generate the UTxO yourself that you then feed into your own smart contract, that means you can manipulate your own protocol. You might have financial incentive to do so, where an oracle that is publishing it on chain independently does not. Pyth is not functionally different than "trust me bro". By handing the price to the the protocol to publish themselves, the chain of trust is broken. Maybe there is more coming with the Pyth integration, but I don't see the value to this specific integration. Maybe we didn't need the full Charli3 decentralized oracle system because it was overkill, but Pyth is the exact opposite end of the spectrum in that it's insufficient. Honestly, it would be better if SteelSwap just published it's own oracle feeds. We aggregate all price data on Cardano already, we can create rules for how to update it, and it would fit inbetween what Charli3 offered (you would have to trust us as a centralized authority) and what Pyth currently offers (you don't have to trust a protocol to accurately publish things on chain when it may not be in their financial interest not to).
Soon™
This project, developed in partnership with Charli3, was made possible by a Cardano Project Catalyst F12 grant which received ₳ 67.9 MILLION YES votes, or roughly $26,874,820 (at the time) in $ADA voted for this project to be funded. Our platform revolutionizes e-commerce by transforming discount coupons into verifiable NFTs on the Cardano mainnet. Aimed at enhancing trust and convenience, it allows shoppers to access reliable, blockchain-verified deals from top merchants while offering a global platform for promotion. Our project features seamless integration with Adobe Commerce and Magento 2 Open Source e-commerce platforms, empowering merchants to manage and mint verified coupons directly from their administration control panels. Merchants can submit promotions with a single click, automatically minting them as NFTs on Cardano using Adobe Commerce and Magento 2 Open Source extensions developed by Veralidity. In order to ensure coupon code data is always accurate, Charli3 verify's the merchants coupon data, ensuring it's acurate and aligns with the merchant's active promotions. The system also handles real-time updates—if a merchant modifies a promotion, or if the promotion is triggered to be inactive due to various factors such as expiration date or coupon usage as an example, the NFT is automatically updated on-chain, maintaining accurate and active coupon codes effortlessly. verifiedcoupons.veralidity.com
I worked with the Charli3 team starting around October of last year, following the launch of the Paid Open Source Model and initial program setup at Intersect. Charli3 had been a closed-source project, primarily funded through Catalyst. The opportunity was straightforward: support a Catalyst-funded team in transitioning their work into a sustainable open source community asset, while providing a viable path forward for the maintainers. This aligned directly with the goals of the Paid Open Source Model. Several established programs were positioned to support the transition: 1) Incubation Program – Charli3’s native oracle had already received committee-level approval to be incubated under Intersect as a neutral open source host. 2) The Maintainer Retainer Program – designed to provide part-time support for contributors, offering a 12-month runway for ongoing maintenance and improvements. 3) The Tooling Sustainability budget – intended to cover short-term operational needs during the maturation phase and only to apply post incubation. From the committee perspective, the direction was clear. Both the Open Source Committee and Technical Steering Committee had reviewed and accepted the incubation proposal. Funding was discussed and earmarked. The strategic value was evident: helping an existing Cardano infrastructure project successfully transition to open source and strengthen it as an ecosystem public good. After I left Intersect, I no longer had direct visibility into the project’s status. Despite the prior approvals, applications, and clear alignment with program objectives, I did not see visible further progress on the initiative. This experience highlighted a key challenge in open source sustainability. Projects moving from closed to open source typically need more than initial approval and earmarked funds. They benefit from reliable neutral hosting, maintainership support, operational resources, governance clarity, and consistent institutional follow-through. Situations like this are exactly why I’ve advocated for the dOSPO concept: a dedicated, accountable, externally governed mechanism that can help ensure continuity for critical open source infrastructure—so important projects don’t lose momentum due to transitions, bottlenecks, or changes in organizational priorities. The goal is not additional bureaucracy. It is continuity and reliable execution.Open source sustainability is not only about funding. It is about building dependable systems that can guide projects through transitions and help them remain viable once the community depends on them. For full transparency, experiences like this were one of the factors that contributed to my resignation. I chose to step away so I could continue focusing on practical ways to strengthen open source support structures with consistent execution at their core.
Congratulations to the Hackathon winners! Grand Prize Winner - 20,000 ADA "Quantix" by solo entry @maxalexweber QUANTIX is a B2B delivery settlement app for raw materials. Unlike regular RWA use cases, here it just tokenizes the needed facts about goods inventory, price, timestamp, signer set, and not the goods themselves. Conventional B2B delivery settlement runs on PDFs, EDI patchwork, and post-hoc reconciliation: ERP says one thing, the warehouse another, the price sheet is a day old, and disputes are settled by whoever has the better paperwork. QUANTIX replaces that with a single atomic Cardano transaction. Github Repo: github.com/maxalexweber1/… Demo Video: youtube.com/watch?v=g3_FEx… Best DeFi & Integrations - 5,000 ADA "Charli3 Perp" by team @AscendPerps - Charli3 Perp is a minimal implementation of perpetual trading using Charli3 oracle data. It connects verified on-chain ADA/USD price feed to pipeline executed with Midnight for orders, matching, and settlement. Best Real World Settlement - 5,000 ADA "AEGIS Parametric Insurance" by team @fluxpointstudio - Aegis is automated crypto insurance that pays out instantly when oracle-verified price conditions are met -- no claims process, no adjusters, no waiting. The oracle IS the claims adjuster. Best Oracle Tooling - 5,000 ADA "Charli3-js" by team @SyncAI_Network - Typescript charli3 SDK - Agent Integration pathway Community Choice Award - 5,000 ADA "Parametrix by team @lambdac_labs - Parametric risk settlement on Cardano (hedge against real world risks like rainfall or measurable events) Thank you very much to our sponsors for making this hackathon a reality: @Cardano_CF @Catalyst_onX @DraperDragon Big shout out to the @Oraclecharli3 team who volunteered their time to host the hackathon! And lastly, thank you for the incredible support from the community to make this event a success!
Many oracle integrations are too complicated for normal devs so we shipped the first TypeScript SDK as our entry for the @Oraclecharli3 Oracles Hackathon (and we won!) 👏 TL:DR - any app, AI Agent or smart contract can now pull real-world prices onto Cardano with just a few lines of code! There is no Python backend, no complex oracle plumbing, no dealing with signatures, CBOR encoding, consensus logic or low-level Cardano infra. JUST: npm install charli3-js …and you can: → read live ADA/USD prices → refresh oracle data on-chain → use real market data inside AI agents, dApps, and smart contracts We even built: → a live Next.js oracle demo → an Aiken validator gated by real oracle data → an AI agent that settles USD invoices in ADA using the SDK as a tool AI agents, DeFi apps, prediction markets, RWAs, and autonomous finance all need reliable data feeds and making oracle infrastructure accessible to JavaScript + AI developers massively lowers the barrier to building on Cardano.
