Oracle Entity
Oracles in the Internet of Impact
Oracles in the context of the Internet of Impact are trusted digitally-enabled services that operate on stateful data to perform Precision Functions (P-functions).
The 10 P-functions of Precision Impact
Proofing through evaluation and verification of claims
Prediction by determining statistical probabilities and forecasts
Personalisation of interventions and responses
Prescription to program deterministic interventions and responses
Planning support to make decisions about interventions and responses
Proposing how to configure interventions and responses
Prevention through relative risk calculation and alerting
Protection through threat detection and proactive response
Profiling to identify patterns of attributes and features
Participation by enabling humans in the loop
Users employ ixo Oracles to provide these functions on their data. This helps optimise the outcomes, risks and financial results of cyber-cellular organisations, projects and investments.
Types of Oracles
Oracles are categorised into different namespace types, to help identify the their general purpose. Whilst oracles are all the same entity class, some security and technical characteristics can differ, depending on the oracle type.
For instance, a Treasury Oracle must be listed in the genesis record of an ixo-SDK blockchain. This type of oracle has the privileged capability to programmatically mint, burn or transfer a specific token on the network.
| Oracle Type | Purpose (click the links to learn how) |
|---|---|
Evaluation Oracle | Approval of claims |
Alpha Oracle | Risk estimation |
Verification Oracle | Verification of claim and credential proofs (including Zero-Knowledge Proofs) |
Credentialing Oracle | Issuance of Verifiable Credentials |
Impact Oracle | Precision impact |
Audit Oracle | Claims and transactions audit |
Banking Oracle | Banking claims |
Treasury Oracle | Instruct the network treasury module to programmatically mint, burn or transfer tokens |
Oracle Trust Model
Web of Trust
Each oracle has a digital identifier (DID), with one or more verifiable credentials. These credentials are issued by other entities that have a high trust rating, serving as Trust Seeds. This creates a stateful trust graph, based on cryptographic proofs, which can be independently extracted by any Internet of Impact user who wishes to verify that an oracle can be trusted.
Trust rating
Trust must be earned over time. The performance of each oracle is recorded in the blockchain record. For a given oracle, a user can determine from the oracle's transaction history how many services the oracle has provided, to how many different users. They can also see any disputes against the oracle, which were upheld against the oracle provider.
Bonded stake
Oracle service providers may be required by the users who employ their oracles, to place a security deposit into escrow, in order to perform services. This performance bond is a risk assurance mechanism for the users of an oracle service. The bond can be slashed if the terms of a Service Execution Agreement are not upheld, when a dispute is adjudicated against the oracle provider.
Future topics
Oracle launchpad and innovation bonds
Oracle development toolkit
Jupyter Notebooks for designing and training oracles
Federated learning on a Cell Node network
Oracle credentialing
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