Ripple Labs is on the verge of a milestone development for the crypto space of late. The leading blockchain-based payment technology company has recently been awarded with a US patent (No. 10,789,068) for a state-of-the-art smart contract which could use oracle for connecting a distributed portal to various real-world data. It’s certainly great news for the Ripple community and crypto experts are expecting a rise in XRP price in near future. 

It’s to note here, Stefan Thomas, the erstwhile CTO of Ripple, is a chief author of this patent.

Interestingly, Ripple has been working on the patent for more than a couple of years now. As per the sources, the patent was initially filed back in 2018 June. If implemented, the patented design will facilitate a number of beneficial real-world use cases. For example, one use case would be usage of smart contracts for settling options contracts automatically if predetermined conditions match- like the debt-to-equity ratio of a firm hitting a specific mark.

The patented design would also have application in the oil industry. For example, it can serve to feed information on the density of one particular oil shipment which can eventually help smart contracts to decide on whether or not to conduct a trade.

Smart contracts have mostly been a staple with Ethereum. But, of late, many other major blockchains are aspiring to add on similar capabilities. You have the example of BitMEX here. In the early quarter of this year, this leading derivatives exchange awarded a huge grant of around $50,000 to a BTC Core contributor for development of BTC smart contract. 

Smart contracts hold the potential to revolutionize many traditional industries. But unfortunately, they have not been able to experience mass adoption yet. One of the chief reasons is that they need real-world data to contribute to real-world use cases which is prohibited by the underlying protocol restrictions of blockchain. In other words, blockchain is unable to access real-world data given its protocol restrictions.  On one hand, it helps blockchains to maintain their immutability but on another, these restrictions seriously limit the scope of operations of smart contracts. Oracles are developed specifically to solve such issues.

Oracles are middleware solutions that source data from the external world and feed them into blockchain smart contracts. One of the most talked about oracles today is the Bridge Oracle system. It has recently been introduced on TRON blockchain and Bridge oracle is TRON’s first dedicated public oracle system.

One of the major reasons why Bridge oracle is gaining steady traction today is its decentralized nature.

The current crypto space is marked by a high rise in the DeFi boom and DeFi applications running on smart contracts call for reliable authentic data. Centralized oracles can’t assure guaranteed reliable  data as here information is provided from one source only and there is no scope to verify or compare data with other sources.

But, a decentralized oracle like Bridge Oracle sources data from multiple sources which always provides plenty of scope to verify credibility of data injected into smart contracts. Bridge oracle allows to add varied kinds of proof to check the authenticity of data so that the smart contracts and DeFi applications receive only the most bankable information for  an effective and fault-proof operation.