Thomson Reuters Releases Blockchain Smart Oracle
The Smart Oracle, called BlockOne IQ, will push external data into the blockchain.
BlockOne IQ, currently in beta testing, can be inserted into a chain and called upon by participants to verify certain data, like how an API is used to update rates in a transaction. It will be able to provide both current and historical data. Since a blockchain cannot access data outside of it, an oracle is needed to push external data that may not be baked into smart contracts because these fluctuate.
When participants need to either update or verify values in a smart contract – the current London Interbank Offered Rate, for example – they can call up an oracle like BlockOne IQ, which then connects to Thomson Reuters’ web service, which then provides the data. It is then cryptographically signed in order to prove that the data came from the company so that the smart contract can be updated.
Sam Chadwick, Thomson Reuters’ director of strategy for Innovation and Blockchain, says the goal for the release is to gauge the demand for this kind of data with respect to distributed-ledger projects.
“We’ve been experimenting with blockchain for years and what we’ve heard are people asking if there’s a way to put data not currently on the chain to verify information,” says Chadwick. “We want to get an early indication of the demand for this service.”
BlockOne IQ is not yet in a production environment, although Chadwick notes that most blockchain projects are also still in the pilot phase. It currently runs on the Corda and Ethereum distributed-ledger platforms and Thomson Reuters is currently working on developing it for the Hyperledger chain. The company is part of both the R3 CEV consortium and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.
Chadwick says it was important for Thomson Reuters to introduce the service even before it can run on all three major blockchains so that pilot programs in need of verifiable external data can integrate it early, as well as for Thomson Reuters itself to identify the industry’s needs.
“If you want smart contracts to do more meaningful things, I think smart oracles are needed,” Chadwick notes. “We’re far from production quality, but we wanted to go out there with even just the minimum viability so that we can identify market demand and at the end of the year see what else we need to do to bring it to production quality and other client needs.”
Members of R3 and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance can access BlockOne IQ as well as developers on the Thomson Reuters Developer Network.
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