Switchboard 101: A Beginner’s Guide

7 min readMar 6, 2025

How do blockchain apps get real-world data like new memecoin prices or sports scores? This introduces Switchboard: a fast, secure way to connect blockchains to that data. We’ll explore what it is, how it works, and why it’s a better option for trading, gaming, and more, built for flexibility.

What is Switchboard?

Switchboard is a versatile tool. We’ll explain it in a few different ways, so you can understand it no matter your background. Let’s look at how Switchboard might appear to developers, everyday users, and those interested in the technical details.

For the Developers: Building your Dream App Made Easy

Switchboard is a decentralized, multi-chain oracle that delivers real-world data to smart contracts quickly and securely. It runs on Solana, EVM chains like Arbitrum, Aptos, and Sui, with SDKs in JavaScript, Rust, and more. Using secure hardware environments, it ensures data is protected from tampering and processed accurately through an “Oracle Queue.” Developers can create custom feeds and pay small fees in SOL or SUI.

For the Tech-Savvy: Exploring the Tech Behind Fast Data

Switchboard is a next-generation oracle network. Unlike older oracles that constantly send updates (which can be wasteful), Switchboard only fetches data when it’s needed. This “on-demand” approach saves money and ensures the information is always fresh.

For Everyone: Discovering Amazing Apps in The Blockchain Space

Imagine the postal service, but instead of slow letters, it’s lightning-fast digital information. That’s Switchboard. It brings real-world data, like prices or sports scores, to blockchain apps at incredible speed.

Meaning, you can build all sorts of applications, like trading tools, games, or betting platforms, without being slowed down.

What Switchboard Aims to Fix in the Oracle Space

The oracle space has long struggled with slow speeds, high costs, risky centralization, and inflexible data options. Switchboard tackles these problems head-on:

Delayed Data, Outdated Info:
Traditional oracles are slow, sending data on fixed schedules or delaying updates. This can leave dapps with outdated prices during volatile market moves. Switchboard solves this by delivering data on demand, cutting delays to under a second to keep DeFi and trading apps fast and current.
Expensive & Inefficient Model:
Old-school oracles drain resources and cash — clogging blockchains with nonstop updates or burden developers and users with costly, sluggish pulls.
The Risk of Centralization:
Many oracles rely on a few central points, which can be dangerous if they fail or become corrupted. Switchboard employs a decentralized network and TEEs to prevent a single point of failure.
Limited Choice of Assets:
Legacy oracles often give you stiff, off-the-shelf data feeds with a limited choice of assets — great for basic stock prices but useless for creative ideas like meme coin trades or prediction markets. Developers get stuck, unable to build what they dream up. Switchboard flips this, letting anyone create custom feeds for DeFi, trading, or real-world assets, no limits attached, outpacing rigid old systems with flexible, fast data.

What Switchboard Brings to the Table

Switchboard offers a range of powerful features:

On-Demand Data: A pull-based system that grabs data only when you need it, cutting out delays and extra updates. It’s perfect for real-time price feeds in decentralized exchanges (DEXs), lending protocols like MarginFi, and derivatives markets, keeping data fresh and spot-on.
Custom Data Feeds: Developers can whip up their own oracles without restrictions, tracking quirky stuff like meme coin prices, event-driven feeds like live scores, or unique asset data. It’s a game-changer for DeFi, GameFi, and Web3 projects needing tailored solutions.
Oracle Aggregation: Switchboard’s Oracle Aggregation pulls data from multiple oracles, like Pyth and Chainlink, into one fast transaction, delivering unified, real-time info to blockchain apps for DeFi, trading, or real-world assets. It gathers price data or other metrics from these trusted sources, combines them into a single reliable feed, and sends it to smart contracts, reducing delays, boosting reliability by avoiding single-source risks, and simplifying data management so developers can build secure, accurate apps without juggling multiple oracles.
Randomness Generation: Using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), Switchboard provides secure and verifiable random numbers, essential for fair gaming, lotteries, NFT minting (random rare drops), and prediction markets. It ensures unpredictability and trust, making it a valuable tool for applications where fairness is important.
Switchboard Secrets: This feature lets you safely tuck sensitive info, like API keys or private data, right into your oracle feeds. Using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), it keeps secrets secure and quick to access — great for hiding API keys for third-party services, embedding private data in DeFi apps, or authorizing secure trades in smart contracts.
SAIL (Coming Soon): Short for Switchboard Attestation Inference Layer, SAIL is a 2025 teaser focusing on AI agents. It’ll verify their actions on the blockchain using TEEs and on-chain checks, acting as a trust layer for AI apps like DeFi bots or games — ensuring they work as promised, fast, and without human checks. More details are yet to be released.

Why Switchboard Beats Traditional Oracles

Switchboard offers significant advantages over older solutions like Chainlink and Pyth:

Speed That Powers Instant Action

Switchboard delivers data in under half a second, vital for time-sensitive dApps like high-frequency trading, live gaming, or event-driven DeFi. It beats market flashes for perpetuals trades and updates live goal bets faster than the whistle. Chainlink’s hourly push feeds (e.g., ETH/USD) lag minutes, and its Functions lack snap speed. Pyth’s 400ms comes with centralized trade-offs. Switchboard’s sub-second edge keeps dApps live and sharp — no trade-killing or player-frustrating delays.

Freedom to Build What You Want

Developers can create any data feed — like meme coin prices or sports scores — in minutes, no barriers. This pairs with speed to power fast ideas, unlike Chainlink’s slow DAO approvals or Pyth’s fixed assets. Switchboard’s open setup delivers exact, fresh data when your dApp needs it.

Decentralized for Real

Switchboard’s open node network with TEEs ensures that no single failure slows it down, allowing it to operate at maximum speed. Pyth’s central publishers and Chainlink’s curated nodes are both at risk of freezing. Switchboard ensures that data flows in time-critical dApps.

Cost Efficiency That Scales Seamlessly

Switchboards data feeds let you only pay for the data you use, making it affordable even for frequent updates.

Real-World Use cases

Switchboard’s speed delivers results. DeFi perpetuals like Drift use its real-time prices to block front-running — where traders get information on a trade (like huge buy or sell orders) they shouldn’t know about, then jump in first to profit unfairly before prices move. Switchboard’s super-fast data, arriving in milliseconds, ensures Drift’s trades are fair and quick, giving honest traders an even shot. Tokenized assets, like carbon credits, also get instant market data — something slower oracles can’t match.

Who’s using Switchboard?

Switchboard powers apps across several top blockchain networks, making its fast, reliable data available wherever developers need it. Here’s where it shines, along with the protocols inside each chain using it:

Solana: On Solana, Switchboard is a key player, supporting major protocols. MarginFi, Jito, Drift, Kamino, and Save.
Sui: Since joining Sui’s mainnet in December 2022, Switchboard fuels Sui’s DeFi apps, supporting protocols like Scallop and Suilend.
Monad Testnet: The recently launched Monad Testnet, built for scalability and speed, is Switchboard’s newest target. While full mainnet integrations are still in progress as of early 2025, it’s likely to support protocols like Kintsu (liquid staking) with low-latency data for time-sensitive apps on Monad.
Aptos: On Aptos, Switchboard powers DeFi and trading apps like Aries Market, tapping Switchboard’s custom data for real-time pricing to boost performance.
Eclipse: On Eclipse, a Solana Virtual Machine (SVM)-compatible layer, Switchboard backs fast, interoperable DeFi apps like Neptune, enhancing performance with custom feeds.

(Editor’s note: This is not an exhaustive list.)

List of All Supported Chains for Developers to Build. (These are all in their Mainnet Phase)

List of all the Protocols Integrated with Switchboard

Switchboard’s Big Plans in 2025

Switchboard has big plans for 2025 to make blockchain apps better for DeFi, trading, and real-world assets. The upcoming Switchboard Attestation Inference Layer (SAIL) will bring trust to AI agents like DeFi bots, ensuring payments, trades, tasks, and media are secure and verifiable. Switchboard is expanding to new blockchains like Monad, Sui, and Eclipse for faster, more reliable data. It’s also launching its Jito Node Consensus Network (NCN) on Solana, enabling secure (re)staking to improve security, speed, and staking efficiency. With nearly $3B in total value secured, Switchboard is building new tools for DeFi, trading, and real-world assets — helping make Web3 faster, more open, and more secure for daily use.

Ready to Learn More?

To learn more about Switchboard:

Visit the Switchboard website
Explore the developer documentation
Join the Discord
Follow on X
Read the Whitepaper