DIA and CoinMarketCap Launch the CoinMarketCap Oracle

Oracles: The All-Seeing Eyes That Guide Crypto Networks

Oracles in DeFi 101: A Deep Dive by Tellor

## What Is DIA (DIA)?

DIA (Decentralised Information Asset) is an open-source oracle platform that enables market actors to source, supply and share trustable data. DIA aims to be an ecosystem for open financial data in a financial smart contract ecosystem, to bring together data analysts, data providers and data users. In general, DIA provides a reliable and verifiable bridge between off-chain data from various sources and on-chain smart contracts that can be used to build a variety of financial [DApps](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/decentralized-applications-dapps).

DIA is the governance token of the platform. It is currently based on [ERC-20 ](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/erc-20)Ethereum protocol.

The project was founded in 2018, while the token supply was made available to the public during the bonding curve sale from Aug. 3 through Aug. 17, 2020, where 10.2 million tokens were sold.


### Who Are the Founders of DIA?

The DIA association was co-founded by a group of a dozen people, though Paul Claudius, Michael Weber and Samuel Brack are the leaders.

Claudius is the face of the project and its lead advocate, sometimes also mentioned as a CBO. He has a masters degree in international management from ESCP Europe and a bachelors in business and economics from Passau University. Apart from working on DIA, he is also a co-founder and CEO of BlockState AG and c ventures. Before crypto, he had worked as director for a nutrition company called nu3.

Michael Weber is DIA's Founder and Association President. He holds degrees in management from ESCP Business School and an  economics and physics from University of Cologne, Germany.

He has worked in several banks and financial institutions before turning to crypto, where he founded such projects as Goodcoin, myLucy and BlockState. 

Samuel Brack serves DIA in the role of CTO. Like both Claudius and Weber, he shares the same position at BlockState. He has a masters degree in computer science from Humboldt University of Berlin, where as of January 2020, he is still studying for his PhD.


#### What Makes DIA Unique?

DIA aims to become the Wikipedia of financial data. It specifically addresses the problem of dated/unverified/hard to access data in the world of finance and crypto, especially [DeFi](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-decentralized-finance), while proposing to solve it viaa system of financial incentives for users to keep the flow of open-source, validated data streams to the [oracles](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/oracles-the-all-seeing-eye-that-guides-crypto-networks) up and running. The current design of oracles, DIA argues, is non-transparent, difficult to scale and vulnerable to attack.

The DIA governance token will be used to fund data collection, data validation, voting on governance decisions and to incentivize the development of the platform. Users can stake DIA tokens to incentivi`e new data to appear on the platform, but access to historical data though DIA is free.


#### Related Pages:

Check out [Chainlink](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/chainlink/), a decentralised oracle network for DeFi

[Tellor ](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tellor/)is another Ethereum-based oracle for DeFi and DApps

What is a [DAO](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/what-is-a-dao)?

New to oracles and DeFi? Learn more with[ our glossary](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/oracles).

Ready for more? Check out our [blog](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/categories/blog) for the latest crypto news and insights.


#### How Many DIA (DIA) Tokens Are There in Circulation?

The total DIA token supply is limited with 200 million coins minted. 10 million tokens were initially sold at a private sale, 19.5 million are with early investors and advisors, Outlier Ventures being the largest. 30 million coins were offered for a bonding curve sale in August 2020, out of which 10.2 million were sold to the public, and the remaining 19.8 million burned. Another 24 million tokens are allocated to founders and team with a 29 month vesting period, and 25 million locked for the future use for the development of the DIA ecosystem. Finally,  91.5 million DIA tokens are in the company's reserve to be unlocked in equal parts over 10 years every December. Out of the first unlocked part, half of the tokens were burned in an instant, after the community vote makes the decision.

It is planned that smart contracts using DIA oracles will be receiving DIA Governance Tokens on a daily basis through what they call “proof-of-use” and “proof-of-truth” mechanisms.


### How Is the DIA Network Secured?

DIA is a standard [ERC-20 ](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/erc-20)token, meaning it requires Ethereum to function, inheriting all its strengths and weaknesses. The Ethereum network is one of the largest and thus strongest because of its decentralization, as all transactions are protected by the Ethash [proof-of-work](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake) function. ERC-20 merely defines a set of rules for tokens to operate on. Downsides of Ethereum may be noticeable: for example, congestion can hike the price of [gas](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/gas-price) needed to perform transactions, leading to delays and abnormally high transaction fees, which impact all participants.


### Where Can You Buy DIA (DIA)?

DIA is a freely-tradable token. Pairs available for trading include BTC, USDT and ETH The top exchanges for trading in DIA are currently [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/), [OKEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/okex/), [HBTC](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/hbtc/), [Bidesk](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bidesk/), and [BiKi](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/biki/). You can find others listed on our [crypto exchanges page](https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/).

New to crypto and want to know how to buy Bitcoin (BTC) or any other token? Find out the details [here](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/).

Trust Wallet

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Binance Chain Wallet

DIA redefines oracles on 30+ L1/L2s: Fully customisable, unmet asset coverage, 100% transparent. Enabling new primitives for #DeFi, #NFTfi and #GameFi.

Ethereum

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Chainlink

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Uniswap

Harvest Finance

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DEXTools

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Verasity

SingularityDAO

Bitcoin Palladium

FractonX

Cajutel

Zedxion

Pullix

Band Protocol is a cross-chain data oracle platform that is able to take real-world data and supply it to on-chain applications, while also connecting APIs to smart-contracts to facilitate the exchange of information between on-chain and off-chain data sources.

By supplying reputable, verifiable real-world data to blockchains, Band Protocol unlocks a range of new use cases for developers to explore — since they can now use any type of real-world data as part of their decentralized application (DApp) logic, including sports, weather, random numbers, price feed data and more.

Band Protocol initially launched as an ERC-20 project on the Ethereum blockchain in September 2019, but transitioned to the Cosmos network in June 2020 with the release of Band Protocol 2.0. The new protocol is built on BandChain using the Cosmos SDK. Oracle nodes on BandChain not only relay data but are also involved in block production/validation, giving them a dual role.

BAND is the native token of the Band Protocol ecosystem and is used as collateral by validators involved in fulfilling data requests, as well as the main medium of exchange on BandChain — being used to paying for private data.

Band Protocol

Orion is a suite of decentralized finance (DeFi) trading products with instant access to aggregated centralized and decentralized exchange liquidity to provide users with real-time best asset prices in a seamless trading experience. Orion offers the non-custodial equivalent of a DEX with access to the best priced liquidity in the world, empowering people with financial responsibility on a global scale.

Orion

Bella Protocol is a platform that provides a suite of DeFi products designed to make crypto banking simpler and more accessible. The protocol aims to create a better user experience by eliminating the high fee and slow transaction issues that can affect some blockchain platforms — while simultaneously improving the user experience through its simplified DeFi smart portal.

Bella's smart pool feature allows users to access the best yields available in the DeFi market, while benefiting from nearly zero gas fees — since these are directly subsidized by the platform.

The project launched in September 2020 as the first project distributed via Binance’s Launchpool platform, and has secured investments from several prominent firms, including Arrington XRP Capital and Ledger Capital.

The protocol was built by the ARPA team, a blockchain-based layer 2 solution for privacy-preserving computation. The BEL token is an essential component of the Bella Protocol ecosystem and serves as both a reward token that allows holders to participate in the governance of the platform.

BEL can be used to farm fee rewards from the network, get exclusive discounts on Bella protocol products (such as its robo-advisor tool), and for earning staking rewards.

Bella Protocol

Litentry

Reef is a Reliable Extensible Efficient Fast Layer-1 Blockchain for DeFi, NFT & Gaming. Built using Substrate Framework, it provides high scalability, enabling almost instant low-cost transactions, and supports Solidity and EVM, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate their DApps from Ethereum without any change in the codebase.

Reef Chain is the most advanced EVM-compatible blockchain. It's self-upgradable and has on-chain governance. Its infrastructure also allows for EVM extensions which allows for native token bridge, scheduled calls (ie. recurring payments), and smart contract in-place code upgrades. In the near future, it will support additional VMs which will allow developers to write code in multiple programming languages. The network runs on a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which offers scalability and low fees.

REEF is the native token that is used for:

Fees for processing transactions and storing data.

Running validator nodes by staking REEF tokens.

Nominating which validator nodes should be part of the network.

Reef is backed by multiple leading funds and venture capitalists including NGC, QCP, Bitcoin.com, Kenetic Capital, LD Capital, TRG Capital, Krypital Group, Genesis Block, Woodstock Fund and others.

Reef Chain development tools include:

Remix and EVM integrated development environments for uploading and deploying smart contracts.

Reefscan blockchain explorer to assist with deploying validators, bonding and nominating validators, debugging contracts, and understanding network performance.

Reef command line tools that allow developers deploy applications from local environments.

Reef wallet for accessing and interacting with the blockchain

Reef

Origin Protocol develops web3 technologies with the intention of bringing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi) to the masses. The protocol’s unique tooling and diverse partnerships help in realizing these goals. Origin Protocol has two flagship products: Origin Story (governed by OGN), and Origin Dollar (governed by OGV).

Origin Story is a white label NFT marketplace solution that works with disrupters in various sectors by leveraging non-fungible tokens. The platform hosts NFT marketplaces and tooling in various industries, including the real estate, profile picture, music, art and entertainment industries.

Some of Origin Story’s partners include Roofstock onChain, Pudgy Penguins, Sappy Seals, Paris Hilton, 3LAU, BT, Inspiration4, and The Doge Pound. Origin Story Marketplaces seek to cast a wide net in various industries being impacted by NFTs, rather than focusing on any one area in particular. Investors may see OGN as the ‘picks and shovels’ approach to investing in NFTs.

Origin Protocol

Ontology is a project designed to bring trust, privacy, and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions. It is building the infrastructure to provide trusted access to Web3, allowing individuals and enterprises to rest assured that through regulatory compliant digital identity solutions, users and their privacy come first.

The Ontology blockchain is a high speed, low cost public blockchain. It is designed to bring decentralized identity and data solutions to Web3, with the goal of increasing privacy, transparency, and trust. To achieve this, users and enterprises are provided with the flexibility to build blockchain-based solutions that suit their needs, while also ensuring regulatory compliance. Through Ontology’s Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ontology ensures frictionless compatibility with Ethereum, the first step in the creation of the Ontology Multi-Virtual Machine and further interoperability for the chain.

At its launch, Ontology chose to forego the popular initial coin offering (ICO) model in favor of a series of community distributions and airdrops of its ONT cryptocurrency.

This helped to quickly establish both organic price discovery and a passionate community and helped the project to avoid subsequent regulatory scrutiny.

For example, for a brief period any person who signed up for the Ontology newsletter received an airdrop of free 1,000 ONT, which reached a value of $10 per token soon after the token became listed on major exchanges like Binance.

Ontology launched its own MainNet on June 30, 2018 and has been up and running smoothly since.

Ontology

Marlin is an open protocol that provides a high-performance programmable network infrastructure for DeFi and Web 3.0. The nodes in the Marlin network, called Metanodes, operate the MarlinVM which provides a virtual router interface for developers to deploy customized overlays and perform edge computations.

Notable overlays that can be built using MarlinVM include:

Low-latency block multicast to scale blockchains

Low-latency mempool sync for arbitrageurs

Mesh networks

Anonymity networks like mixnets

Device optimization and caching responses of API to Infura, Alchemy etc

Its native utility token POND is used for:

Running validator nodes on the network via staking

Making and voting on governance proposals to determine how network resources are allocated

Determining a set of network performance auditors and compensating users from an insurance fund in case of a SLA breach

Marlin aims to deliver on the promise of a decentralized web where applications secured via the blockchain are indistinguishable in terms of performance to users accustomed to Web 2.0.

Marlin

UMA was founded in 2018 by Allison Lu and Hart Lambur, two ex Goldman Sachs traders, with the goal of making global markets universally fair, accessible, secure and decentralized.

The team drew inspiration from traditional finance derivatives to define an open-source protocol to allow anyone, anywhere, to design and build trustless financial contracts.

Akropolis is a company that operates an Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol that seeks to provide an autonomous financial ecosystem for saving and growing wealth, including through borrowing and lending. To do so, it offers a series of products including AkropolisOS, a framework for developing for-profit decentralized autonomous organizations, Sparta, a platform for uncollateralized lending, and Delphi, a yield farming aggregator and tool for dollar-cost averaging.

The project uses an ERC-20 token, AKRO, for protocol governance across its suite of products.

Akropoli was first announced in March 2018, launching on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2020.

Akropolis

Bluzelle is a decentralized storage network for the creator economy.

Bluzelle delivers high security, un-matched availability, and is censorship resistant. Whether you are an artist, musician, scientist, publisher, or developer, Bluzelle protects the intellectual property of all creators. Bluzelle is data storage, file storage, oracles, and more. Its is specific for NFTs and DeFi.

Bluzelle’s core products are all related to data and powered by its Tendermint Blockchain:

Bluzelle DB - a decentralized database for software developers to store information

Bluzelle Oracles - a truly decentralized pricing oracle that provides high speed and high security for Defi applications

Bluzelle Staking - where BLZ holders can currently stake their tokens and earn rewards for providing storage and pricing data.

Bluzelle

Flamingo is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform based on the Neo blockchain and the Poly Network interoperability protocol. It combines several DeFi applications into a single ecosystem: a cross-blockchain asset gateway (wrapper), an on-blockchain liquidity pool (swap), a blockchain asset vault, a perpetual contract trading platform (perp) and a decentralized governance organization (DAO).

Different components of the Flamingo network are planned to be launched in several phases:

Token wrapper for Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, Neo, Ontology and others: September 23, 2020

Swap and LP token staking: September 30, 2020

Phase 3 vault launch and stablecoin issuance: October 28, 2020

Perp launch: November 25, 2020

DAO launch: December 23, 2020

Flamingo

Linear is a decentralized delta-one asset protocol capable of instantly creating synthetic assets with unlimited liquidity. The project opens traditional assets like commodities, forex, market indices and other thematic sectors to cryptocurrency users by supporting the creation of “Liquids” — Linear’s synthetic asset tokens.

The protocol consists of various products like Linear.Buildr, a DApp used to manage Liquids using Linear (LINA) and other tokens as collateral. The exchange is specifically created to enable trading of a variety of Liquids with rapid confirmation times and robust security.

LINA is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum network whose main purpose is as collateral for Liquids (using Buildr) and for community governance of the protocol. All token holders have access to the Linear DAO, enabling them to vote on different initiatives and proposals, helping to shape the development of the Linear ecosystem.

The main goal of Linear is to provide a superior user experience with better scalability and greater speed thanks to the cross-chain capabilities of the protocol. Linear Finance intends to provide a simple solution for users that want exposure to traditional assets while still benefiting from the features enabled only by blockchain technology.

Frontier is a chain-agnostic decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator. The project aims to add DeFi support to several blockchains, including BandChain (BAND), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Harmony (ONE).

Frontier’s applications allow users to manage staking, DeFi positions, best-rate asset swapping, liquidity mining, and collateralized debt position (CDP) creation and monitoring.

In a nutshell, Frontier is bringing the core functions of DeFi to users, regardless of the platforms they use.

Frontier began development in April 2019, and the beta platform launched in November 2019.

Frontier

SKALE, described as a modular blockchain network, is designed to bring scalability to Ethereum. SKALE is the only blockchain network capable of running an unlimited number of fast, on-demand, pooled-security Blockchains with zero gas fees to end users. These individual chains are known as SKALE chains and can be dapp-specific or shared.

The project’s website says it wants to enable people to build and run DApps in a “decentralized modular cloud built for real-world needs and configured for your requirements.” This emphasis on decentralization isn’t at the expense of security.

According to SKALE, those who build on this platform can run Solidity smart contracts “thousands of times faster at a fraction of the mainnet cost” — with games and content streaming services among the projects that already take advantage of its infrastructure.

SKALE

Ren (REN) is an open protocol built to provide interoperability and liquidity between different blockchain platforms.

To learn more about this project, check out our deep dive of Ren.

Formerly known as Republic Protocol, Ren launched RenVM, its virtual machine mainnet, in May 2020, having completed a $34 million initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.

The protocol’s native token, REN, functions as a bond for those running nodes which power RenVM, known as Darknodes.

Ren aims to expand the interoperability, and hence accessibility, of decentralized finance (DeFi) by removing hurdles involved in liquidity between blockchains.

Ethernity Chain

Clover Finance (CLV), or simply Clover, is a blockchain operating system. It provides a one-stop, easy‑to‑use blockchain infrastructure and an ethereum virtual machine (EVM) compatible framework for Substrate‑based applications.

Clover Finance, another offspring of the Substrate-based Polkadot parachain aims at bridging the compatibility gap when building and operating across blockchains.

The project was founded in May 2020 and the mainnet of Clover Finance launched in July 2021.

Smart contracts often struggle to access dependable data, but application programming interfaces (APIs) have been touted as a solution to this problem.

API3’s stated goal is to allow decentralized versions of APIs to be built, managed and monetized at scales. As blockchain technology plays an ever bigger role in the economy — from decentralized finance to supply chain management — the team behind this project says it has never been more important for smart contracts to provide “timely, reliable real-world data.”

The whitepaper for API3 was unveiled in September 2020 and set out the main problem that’s associated with APIs at present: connectivity. At present, there’s no way for smart contracts to establish a direct connection with APIs for the latest data — and this has led to an explosion in the popularity of oracles.

Although this has helped solve the problem to some extent, the industry has since been grappling with the “Blockchain Oracle Problem.” Oracles are a form of middleware that sit in between APIs and smart contracts — increasing costs and centralization. API3 intends to get around this problem by enabling API providers to operate their very own nodes.

API3’s token went live at the start of December following on from a token sale that generated tens of millions of dollars.

API3

iExec is the leading provider of blockchain-based decentralized computing. Blockchain is utilized to organize a market network where people can monetize their computing power as well as applications and even datasets.

It does this by providing on-demand access to cloud computing resources. IExec can support applications in fields such as big data, healthcare, AI, rendering and fintech. IExec was founded on Oct. 16, 2016, with the goal to reinvent cloud computing through the creation of a new cloud computing paradigm.

As such, iExec relies on the XtremWeb-HEP, an open-source desktop grid software that implements features such as multi-applications, fault-tolerance, multi-users, deployment of virtual images, private infrastructure, data management, security and much more.