Chainlink is just one of many providers of decentralised oracles, each with a slightly different approach to solving the oracle problem. In truth, all solutions include some sort of compromise or vulnerability.
The sheer complexity of Chainlink’s three-layered solution is an issue as it creates a broad attack surface for bad actors to find a way to compromise the data it is feeding into a blockchain.
The way Chainlink ensures the integrity of its data has also been criticised for failing to provide a meaningful economic incentive to do the right thing and not collude to provide false data. Its tier of data-submitting Nodes is kept honest by an additional layer of Nodes.
The question is ‘Who is policing the second tier?’
which becomes a recursive problem. This conundrum is
just an extension of the broader question around
how to scale blockchains but retain security and
decentralisation - the blockchain trilemma. Setting aside the question as to whether oracles are truly decentralised, you have to consider the, more straightforward issue of cost.
For the highly liquid BTC/USD market, there is evident demand and willingness to pay the fee from an oracle but is the oracle system practical or even justified at the micro-scale?
In Ancient Greece an oracle was a person believed to be able to act as a portal, enabling the Gods to speak directly to the people. They were tremendously influential, guiding everything from politics to military strategy.
The modern blockchain equivalent of ancient oracles holds an equally important position, bringing information to closed blockchain domains from the off-chain world. In complete contrast to their Greek counterparts, blockchain oracles must be able to prove their accuracy and independence as well preserve the decentralised way blockchains work to justify their usefulness.
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