Can Tellor (TRB) make money with a Decentralized Oracle Protocol?

They built Tellor (TRB) to make money by increasing the amount of data available to smart contracts and Ethereum apps.

Present Ethereum (ETH) smart contracts cannot access information outside the blockchain. For example, a smart contract cannot access a database of news articles, financial data, or legal information.

This makes it hard for artificial intelligence and machine learning apps to use the blockchain. It also limits the financial transactions a blockchain can process. For example, a smart contract cannot approve loans because it cannot access credit reports. Hence, an oracle is a bridge between a smart contract and off-chain data sources.

Can Tellor (TRB) solve the Oracle Problem?

A smart contract is a digital robot or app that executes a task on the blockchain. For example, a lending smart contract could issue loans.

A decentralized oracle protocol is a data feed that transmits off-chain data to the blockchain. Oracles source, verify, and transmit external information for smart contracts. For example, the oracle tells the smart contract that the data is good.

Many smart contracts need good data. For example, a decentralized lending platform needs to verify and validate loan collateral. Similarly, a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace needs to verify NFT ownership. Plus, an insurance protocol needs to verify claims and validate policyholders.

Tellor (TRB) claims to have a better means of verifying oracle data. To explain, they require people to deposit a stake when they provide data. Tellor offers a dispute fee to challenge any data.

Tellor’s Decentralized Oracle Protocol

Tellor is a decentralized oracle protocol that operates an open and permissionless network of data reporters.

They claim Tellor can transmit any type of data to smart contracts. For example, Tellor can pull market data from application programming interfaces (API). Users can also build customized data feeds to supply specific kinds of data.

Interestingly, they claim Tellor can build customized oracles. For example, interfaces for betting markets and other specialized needs.

If there is a challenge, Tellor stakeholders settle the dispute with a vote. If the data reporter loses, Tellor pays his stake to the person who challenges the data.

This allows anybody to stake and report data on Tellor. It also limits the possibility that Tellor’s oracle will grab bad data. Users provide data through Telliot an open sourced reporting client.

How Tellor’s Smart Contracts work

A series of smart contracts operate Tellor’s network. For instance, the Oracle contract allows users to stake, report, and read data. It also stakes Tellor (TRB) tokens to the Oracle from data reporters.

The Autopay contract pays reports. Users can schedule reporting rewards or pay tips to data reporters through the Autopay Contract. A Governance contract controls votes, dispute resolutions, and the distribution of dispute fees. A Token contract mints Time Based Rewards to the Oracle contract on Ethereum’s mainnet.

Tellor claims users can access Contract call data across Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains. THe EVM is the digital robot that runs Ethereum’s blockchain. Hence, Tellor can provide data for the EVM. This can support cross-chain admin management, NFT ownership verification, loan collateral validation, cross-chain insurance, cross-chain DAO voting. Hence, Tellor can perform a variety of decentralized finance tasks.

Tellor and Big Data

I think there could be an enormous market for Tellor’s Oracle protocols. Many companies need to verify data.

For example, artificial intelligence companies need to verify the data large language models such as GPT-4 use to solve problems. Moreover, building and training AIs requires enormous amounts of data that Tellor could provide. Thus, Tellor is a Big Data Solution that can cash in artificial intelligence.

Big Data is a growing business. For example, global big data revenues grew from $64 billion in 2021 to $70 billion in 2022, Statista estimates. Plus, Statista forecasts big data worldwide revenues will grow to $77 billion in 2023, $84 billion in 2024, $90 billion in 2025, $96 billion in 2026, and $103 billion in 2027. Incredibly, Big Data revenues grew from $7.6 billion in 2011 to $64 billion in 2021.

Hence, the market and potential revenues for data are growing, which bodes well for Tellor.

What Value Does Tellor (TRB) Offer?

Mr. Market has a strong interest in Tellor (TRB). For example, Tellor was CoinMarketCap’s 11th most trending cryptocurrency on 16 May 2023. In contrast, Tellor was CoinMarketCap’s 614th ranked cryptocurrency on 18 May 2023.

Comparatively, CoinMarketCap gave Tellor a $12.03 Coin Price, a $20.497 million Market Capitalization, a $29.378 million Fully Diluted Market Capitalization, a $2.061 million 24-Hour Market Volume, and a $2.084 million Centralized Exchange (CEX) Volume on 18 May 2023. They base those numbers on a 1.703 million TRB Circulating Supply and a $2.442 million TRB Total Supply.

In the final analysis, I consider Tellor an interesting cryptocurrency that could make money. I think Tellor can make money because it solves one of the blockchain’s biggest problems accessing off-chain.

If it works as advertised, I think Tellor could make money by making data into a commodity. Hence, speculators who want to cash in on Big Data and AI need to examine Tellor.