Today’s internet is riddled with misinformation issues, and the blockchain industry is no different. As such, there was a need for specialized solutions dedicated for providing only accurate data. These solutions are known as Oracles, and there is now a solution that provides high-quality data feeds in real time. That solution is DIA, and it grants users access to a wide range of data feeds, while allowing developers to customize their data feeds to their tastes.

What is DIA?

Source: diadata

DIA, or Decentralized Information Asset, is an open-source solution that bridges the gap between traditional financial data and smart contracts. It is designed as a reliable source of information that connects data providers, users, and anyone who interacts with decentralized applications (dApps).

Most traditional blockchain oracles rely on centralized data feeds to provide information. DIA stands out as a comprehensive solution, providing high-quality, transparent data feeds from wider sources that can be used to power various financial applications. As such, users can access a wide range of information, from traditional financial data to real-time market updates. Developers can also customize the data feeds to suit their specific needs, ensuring their users have the most accurate information.

History of DIA

DIA was launched in 2018 by co-founders Paul Claudius, Michael Weber and Samuel Brack. Michael is the project’s CEO, with experience in the baking industry before switching to crypto, where he founded projects like Goodcoin, myLucy and BlockState. Claudius is also a co-founder and CEO at BlockState. Samuel Brack is the current CTO, with a masters degree in computer science from Humboldt University of Berlin.

Building on the expertise of its founding team, DIA was able to gather significant support from the crypto community, as it raised $15.1 million in funding across three funding rounds, with investments from IconPlus Capital, ZBS Capital, and Outlier Ventures. It has also formed partnerships with projects like Conflux, Gnosis Chain, Horizon, Telos and Shiden.

How Does DIA Work?

DIA is designed to gather, verify, and provide customizable data streams for both on and off-chain dApps. It is a particularly important solution in the DeFi sector, as it supplies reliable data to smart contracts that execute transactions. Smart contracts are computer codes that are designed to automatically execute a financial agreement. Because they execute transactions based on specific conditions, they rely on external data to confirm that condition has been met. DIA collects the necessary data, verifies its authenticity, and feeds this information to the smart contract, ensuring smooth and accurate transaction processing.

If a user needs specific data that isn’t already available on the DIA platform, they can submit a request ticket publicly on Github for it. They will then attach a bounty to it, which will be paid in DIA tokens as soon as the information is deemed accurate.

Other members of the DIA community, known as data providers, will then work on these requests and build scrapers (programs created to extract online data) to access the requested data. Once the data is submitted, the code may either be accepted by the community, with the owner receiving the bounty, or another community member can challenge the code by staking DIA tokens and offering another solution. The community will then vote to decide who provided the correct information.

DIA’s decentralized, crowd-sourced approach to data collection makes it essentially the Wikipedia of financial data. It aggregates billions of data points from more than 80 different sources, including centralized and decentralized exchanges, NFT marketplaces, metaverse platforms, and other DeFi applications.

The platform also features an off-chain database to store its data, and the corresponding hashes are stored on Ethereum to prevent malicious activity. The data can be accessed through both on-chain oracles and off-chain APIs. Users can access historical financial data for free, but they will have to pay DIA tokens to get access to live asset prices and specific APIs.

Additionally, DIA supports over 20,000 assets and can source any publicly available data stream, covering a wide range of financial metrics. These include crypto prices, NFT floor prices, and fair value estimates for liquid tokens. This allows DIA to offer reliable data without the need for third parties, in turn enabling developers and users to create self-sustaining financial dApps.

Main Features of DIA

DIA is home to several exciting features, such as:

Oracle Builder

Source: diadata

The DIA Oracle Builder is a flexible tool that allows developers to seamlessly integrate and deploy blockchain price oracles tailored for different use cases. With the oracle builder, developers can also deploy oracles in under 3 minutes.

The Oracle Builder offers instant autonomous deployment, making it quick and easy to set up without assistance. Users can choose their preferred price feeds, data sources, and configure other settings specific to the oracle.

It also offers a management dashboard with a user-friendly interface that provides updates on oracle status, gas levels, etc. The oracle builder also grants developers access to the DIA’s catalog of over 2,500 cryptocurrencies, gotten from different high-volume exchanges. Soon, the oracle builder will feature a custom telegram bot to deliver key updates on deployed oracles directly to your device.

DIA Lumina

Source: diadata

DIA Lumina is an oracle network designed to deliver reliable data feeds for tokens, real-world assets (RWAs), or other data types to any blockchain. The network operates in three stages- data sourcing, computation, and delivery. In the data sourcing phase, DIA Lumina uses “DIA Feeders” to extract real-time data from DEXs, CEXs, and other reliable sources.

The gathered data will then undergo processing and verification through pods and aggregators within Lasernet, a Layer 2 Ethereum rollup. Lasernet is another DIA solution, and it is responsible for executing all the critical oracle operations. After validation, the processed data can be sent across different blockchains using Spectra, DIA’s inter-chain message-passing protocol.

Lasernet

Source: diadata.org

Lasernet is a Layer-2 rollup that operates as the core of the Lumina oracle stack. The platform provides a completely trustless and decentralized environment for oracle operations such as data aggregation, filtering, and computation.

Lasernet uses a modular architecture, which is made up of three layers: the execution layer, consensus layer and the data availability layer. The execution layer handles the core computational tasks of Lasernet, including transaction processing and smart contract deployment. The consensus layer manages the agreement on the state of the network to ensure integrity across all nodes. Finally, the data availability layer is responsible for providing transaction data for all users, thus lightening the load on the execution layer.

Lasernet’s testnet will be officially launched in the fourth quarter of 2024. After the testing period, the mainnet will be launched in the first quarter of 2025. Initially, the mainnet will only be available for select users and will opened to the general public after sufficient testing.

Token Price Feeds

Source: diadata

DIA uses token price feeds to provide smart contracts with real-time price data on over 3,000 cryptocurrencies, all collected transparently from more than 80 trusted, high-volume exchanges, both decentralized and centralized. These feeds form the foundation for building different types of DeFi applications, including automated money markets, lending and borrowing platforms, and more.

NFT Floor Price Feeds (DIA xFloor)

Source: diadata

DIA’s xFloor provides decentralized, real-time data on the prices of various NFT collections. It is an oracle solution that offers accurate pricing that reflects live market conditions by extracting historical data from NFT-marketplace smart contracts.

These feeds are especially useful for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. They help with using NFTs as collateral for borrowing and insurance and providing accurate NFT valuations. This is great for platforms that want to include NFTs in their services, as they provide reliable pricing information, thus reducing issues like having too much or too little collateral.

Additionally, DIA’s open-source model allows developers to create custom feeds to fit their needs, boosting its scalability across diverse NFT platforms and DeFi projects.

Fair Value Price Feeds (DIA xFair)

Source: diadata

DIA xFair is another oracle product that provides DeFi protocols with transparent and collateral-proofed price feeds for illiquid assets. Illiquid assets are assets that cannot be quickly or easily converted into cash without a significant loss in value. These assets include LSTs, computed through on-chain collateral ratio checks.

This system allows for more accurate and fair pricing, supporting various DeFi use cases like lending, borrowing, money markets, options, and helps access idle total value locked (TVL) in LSDs.

DIA Nexus

Source: diadata

DIA Nexus gathers detailed market data directly from various exchanges, reducing reliance on outside data sources. It then processes the data into reliable price feeds using transparent computational methods. These price feeds are delivered through an API and can be integrated directly onto the blockchain using oracle smart contracts, further increasing its interoperability with major Layer 1 and 2 blockchains.

DIA Ecosystem

DIA has partnered with different types of projects, all offering specialized services. Some of them include:

Acala Network

Source: acala

Acala Network is a DeFi hub hosted on Polkadot, offering different services including a stablecoin protocol that enables a stable transfer of value across all of its connected blockchains. It also features a trustless liquid staking protocol to provide more interoperability options for DeFi dApps.

DIA’s partnership with Acala will provide open-source oracle services for the Acala ecosystem. This means that developers working on Acala projects can gain access to DIA’s tools through a specially designed off-chain worker that supports their needs.

Arcana Network

Source: arcana

Arcana Network is a privacy-focused project hosted on Ethereum. It serves as a privacy layer for user authentication, access control, key management, and encrypted storage.

DIA’s two-sided collaboration with Arcana Network will allow DIA to leverage Arcana’s privacy stack to ease the developer experience for those building on DIA’s open source platform. On the other hand, Arcana can leverage DIA’s transparent and accurate oracle suite to boost its treasury management processes.

Ankr

Source: ankr

Ankr uses a cloud-based infrastructure that enables quick and scalable deployment of new nodes in minutes. DIA’s partnership with Ankr will allow DIA to create more data points using Ankr’s cloud-based infrastructure and DIA’s open-source Oracle suite.

What is DIA Token?

The DIA token was launched in August 2020, and it powers the DIA ecosystem, serving as incentives for fair governance and validation of DIA’s crowdsourced data feeds. Any token holder can open discussions to generate ideas that can improve the platform.

DIA also features a staking program for DIA token holders. Users can lock their tokens for periods ranging from 9 to 24 months to earn rewards.

Governance

The governance process is divided into six phases. If a topic gains enough support and is considered valuable for the growth of the DIA platform and DIA DAO, it moves to the second phase, where a proposal is submitted.

Once the proposal is submitted, a poll is conducted on the forum or Discord to pre-validate the proposal. DAO members then decide whether the proposal will be voted on the DIA DAO’s snapshot page. If successful, the proposal moves to the snapshot page, where only DIA token holders can vote.

After completing all the steps, the DIA core team implements the proposal according to the plan, resources, and timeline outlined in the initial proposal. Upon successful implementation, the update will be announced by the forum admins.

The DIA DAO community allows any member to raise issues and join discussions. For more information on the governance process, click here.

DIA Tokenomics

Source: medium

DIA has a total supply of 200 million, a circulating supply of 110,618,000 tokens and a market cap of approximately $117 million. The token was distributed as follows:

• 15% of the maximum supply was sold in a 14-day public offering in August 2020.
• 5% was sold in a private sale
• 12.5% was allocated to the ecosystem token pool
• 12% was reserved for the DIA team and founders, with its vesting period extended to 29 months.
• 9.75% was allocated to early investors and advisors
• 45.75% was locked in an Association Reserve, and will be utilized for functions decided by token holders.

DIA established a structured token vesting schedule to govern the distribution and release of its tokens. Tokens set aside in the Association Reserve were released annually, with around 9.15 million tokens unlocked every year over 10 years beginning in 2021. Tokens from an initial bonding curve distribution were released immediately after the bonding curve offering ended in August 2020. Tokens allocated to the DIA team were initially locked for seven months but will be released over 29 months.

The Ecosystem Token Pool is flexible and can be used as needed to help fund projects that support DIA’s ecosystem, so there isn’t a specific release schedule. Private sale tokens were fully unlocked in August 2020, while tokens allocated to earlier backers are only partially locked.

News on DIA

On September 11th, 2024, DIA announced its integration with Stacks, a popular Bitcoin layer 2 solution. Stacks is hosted on Bitcoin, providing the security of Bitcoin and the flexibility of smart contract functionalities.

DIA’s integration with Stacks will enable Stacks developers to access accurate and real-time price feeds for a wide range of Stacks assets. This will further boost other DeFi protocols such as lending platforms and stablecoins, as the partnership offers extra utility and opens up more use cases.

Is DIA a Good Investment?

DIA differs from other oracle solutions through its decentralized approach to providing financial data. With DIA, users can get access to data varying across token prices, history and others without much hassle. However, it is still crucial that all investors make extensive research or consult a qualified financial personnel before investing in any crypto project because the market is extremely volatile.

Take Action on DIA

DIA is available on centralized and decentralized exchanges, including gate.io. Click here to browse through your preferred pairs.

• DIA/USDT
• DIA/ETH

Useful References

For the latest updates on DIA, you can visit:

• Website
• Whitepaper
• Blog
• Twitter
• Telegram