eOracle Trust Model

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of an oracle, reference the Ethereum Foundation's documentation on oracles

As blockchain technology gains widespread adoption and the usage of its applications expands, the economic significance and security requirements of oracles must grow with it.

Ethereum's Proof of Stake has established the gold standard for economic security, trust minimization, and decentralized validation. Through EigenLayer's shared security, this proven model now extends beyond Ethereum's core consensus, enabling a new generation of oracle services that inherit the same security guarantees.

Access to the largest pool of staked funds

Staked ETH is orders of magnitudes larger than the staking of all other traditional oracles combined. An oracle network with access to staked ETH inherits the established security instead of creating another pool. This access provides a more economically secure and capital-efficient way to build oracle networks.

Native staking

eOracle's security backing, ETH, is independent of eOracle operations. This makes it robust against issues that other oracles who use their token for staking, such as temporal drops in token value and death spirals. Oracles that leverage a sovereign token are open to attacks via value depreciation, leading to security reduction and vice versa.

Slashing for malicious behavior

eOracle's system is designed to deter and address malicious activities. Utilizing EigenLayer, eOracle can initiate procedures that may lead to the slashing of an attacker's staked funds. Slashing completes eOracle's incentive model, matching Ethereum's security apparatus.

Distributed validation

Validators worldwide verify data accuracy, making the network robust against localized disruptions. This approach ensures that no single point of failure can compromise the system, enhancing both security and reliability. Additionally, the diverse geographic distribution of validators contributes to a more resilient and fault-tolerant network capable of withstanding various types of attacks and ensuring continuous neutrality and operations.

Economic and diverse Trust

Economic trust is the amount of capital at stake (quantity), while diverse trust is the variety and balance of nodes involved (quality).

For a protocol to achieve security and liveness in a decentralized manner, it needs a sufficient amount of economic trust and a diverse, well-balanced set of nodes. Only Ethereum has reached sufficient economic and diverse trust.

With restaking via Eigenlayer, an oracle design containing these elements is enabled, providing a practical path to achieving sufficient trust via diverse and economically trusted Ethereum validators.