Switchboard vs. The Competition: Why We Are the Everything Oracle

Oracles are essential for blockchain applications, but not all oracles are created equal. This article compares leading solutions and elaborates why Switchboard could be the all-in-one oracle.

What is an Oracle?

An oracle is a service that delivers external data to systems that can’t access it on their own, like fetching asset prices or weather updates. It acts as a trusted link, enabling these systems to interact with the outside world without relying on a middleman. Oracles can be centralized or decentralized, with the latter using multiple sources for added reliability. That’s a crucial function — especially for systems needing accurate, real-time info without compromise. As demand grows, decentralized oracles are stepping up to meet the challenge of breaking blockchains out of isolation. Right now, oracles are under the microscope. Oracles like Switchboard, Pyth, RedStone, Chainlink are advancing fast, outstripping older data approaches.

How do oracle solutions differ? Who is here to make a change? Who is going to fix the current flaws?

Let’s find out.

Switchboard: The One True Permissionless Oracle

Switchboard is a decentralized, multichain oracle that delivers any real-world data to smart contracts quickly and securely. Currently, Switchboard operates on 10+ blockchains, including Solana (SVM), EVM chains like Arbitrum, Move-based blockchains like Aptos and Sui, Cairo-based blockchain StarkNet, with SDKs in JavaScript, Rust, and more.

Using Trusted Execution Environment (TEEs), Switchboard protects data from tampering and ensures that the data is not stale and stays accurate through its Oracle Queues.

The key distinction between Switchboard and other oracles lies in its decentralized architecture, which enables faster data delivery, greater customizability, and enhanced security, along with oracle aggregation for increased accuracy and reliability.

Switchboard delivers data averaging 400ms, significantly separating it from competitors in terms of speed. This advantage makes Switchboard perfect for high-frequency trading, DeFi liquidations, gaming and any applications requiring instantaneous real-time data refresh upon request instead of depending on batch updates.

Switchboard’s oracle aggregation feature enables projects to integrate data from various sources to increase accuracy, cut single points of failure, and improve reliability.

Moreover, Switchboard removes the oracle accessibility barrier due to its permissionless nature.

Current oracle solutions offer only permissioned data feed creation, which means if you want to access data you have to get approval from the team providing the feed, directly. This makes the process costly, complicated and long, especially for the public or those without too much technical expertise. Unlike those expensive, gated options, Switchboard’s on-demand model uses a pay-as-you-go approach, slashing costs substantially and making it affordable for everyone.

Switchboard’s permissionless data feed creation makes data available to all with an extremely simple deployment process, taking minutes to set it up.

In addition, Switchboard uses Jito’s NCN for strong consensus via independent nodes, which ensures integrity. Its oracle network incentivizes accurate and reliable data, resulting in increased efficiency. Switchboard’s Node Partner Programme provides staking rewards, fees, incentives, support, governance, and DeFi partnerships to improve security and reliability.

With strong decentralization, Switchboard delivers data in milliseconds, preventing block front-running and ensuring fair trades. It provides instant price updates for any tokenized assets and real-time weather data for insurance and disaster response. With low fees and independent nodes, it ensures transparent and equal access for all users.

All in all, Switchboard is The Everything Oracle!

PYTH

Pyth is an oracle that gives blockchains fast, accurate data such as crypto, equities and commodities prices, straight from trusted providers.

But Pyth’s permissioned setup means you need partnerships with publishers and or DAO approval to support new data feeds, which blocks a lot of developers that need custom data Unlike Switchboard, which already lets anyone permissionlessly create a data feed.

Pyth Network resolves price updates using Pythnet, a Solana fork, anchoring them to a single chain for processing, which ties it to Solana’s ecosystem quirks like network congestion risks. It begins with only three publishers per feed — often just exchanges or trading firms — risking thin data diversity and leaving gaps in coverage for less common assets. It relies on Wormhole guardians, a small group of 19 nodes, to relay prices across a handful of blockchains with an average latency of 1.2–1.4 seconds, depending on a limited verification system that’s vulnerable to delays or guardian failures if even a few go offline.

REDSTONE

RedStone is an oracle solution that delivers off-chain data to EVM-compatible blockchains like Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, and Polygon. Redstone focuses on cost efficiency and LST support. The protocol utilizes ERC-7412 to enable on-demand off-chain data retrieval, integrating both push and pull models for efficient data access. Its flexible, modular architecture accommodates diverse applications, such as financial pricing and real-world data making it suitable for a variety of projects.

Compared to RedStone, Switchboard allows permissionless feed creation for all, while RedStone restricts users’ ability to create data feeds as they wish. Switchboard’s decentralized setup prevents censorship, and its TEEs improve security, with an average latency of 400ms. RedStone’s off-chain approach and weaker security come with an average latency of 8–20 seconds.

CHAINLINK

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle that connects blockchains to off-chain data, solving the smart contract access issue. Launched in 2019, it supports more than 14 blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Linea, Sonic and more.

Leveraging a pull model, Chainlink Data Streams offer sub-second data resolution, a commit-and-reveal method to prevent front running, and onchain verification of low latency market data via decentralized infrastructure, while DataFeeds employ a push model. However, Chainlink’s Data Streams offering requires permissioned access to use and is limited to a select number of streams from verified partners.

Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol(CCIP) allows seamless data and token transfer between blockchains. The Verifiable Randomness Function (VRF) from Chainlink provides provably, fair, tamperproof random numbers for onchain casinos, lotteries, and NFT mints.

Chainlink fetches data by assigning a small group of reputable oracle nodes to pull data from off chain sources, then aggregates their inputs-usually via a median-to ensure accuracy, secured with cryptographic signatures, making it strong against tampering.

Compared to Chainlink, Switchboard stands out with its fully permissionless data feed creation, letting anyone quickly and cheaply create fast data feeds.

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