Umbrella Network, a decentralized oracle solution that aims to increase the flow of accurate data between on-chain and off-chain platforms, announced today the launch of its public testnet.
The public testnet will showcase the oracle solution’s now nearly fully functional platform and offer participants in the decentralized finance, or DeFi, ecosystem a novel use case of accessing real-world and accurate pricing data for trading crypto options.
Launch Towards Mainnet
Today’s launch marks a major milestone ahead of Umbrella’s mainnet launch, which is expected to take place this summer. Umbrella’s public testnet also will be unusual given the level of external involvement and offerings, with three validators participating and an offering of four data sources and 750+ data pairs.
The public testnet will provide feeds to, among others, Polkacover, MahaDAO, YOP Finance, Bridge Mutual, Hedget, APYSwap, and BoringDAO, with Hashquark and InfinityStone participating as validators.
Key purposes of the testnet include helping Umbrella incorporate more data points as rapidly as possible and also determining the specific feeds required based on feedback from the network of blockchains and other decentralized applications supported by the network.
Sam Kim, a founding partner at Umbrella Network, described the level of real-world DeFi-focused data available via the company’s public testnet as a clear indication of how close the system is for its formal launch and also its readiness for powering a wide variety of decentralized applications.
Importantly, pricing data available during the testnet will be at the level of sophistication required by Wall Street traders who are looking to trade accurately priced derivatives and other instruments that are currently not well supported in the DeFi ecosystem.
“We’re thrilled to announce that we will be launching our public testnet today,” Kim said. “We’re looking forward to letting our community pull up their sleeves and really get a feel for the system and, of course, to provide us with critical feedback ahead of our forthcoming mainnet launch.”
MahaDAO’s creator, Steven Enamakel, praised his company’s participation in the testnet, saying that he’s “excited to bring in a decentralized, community-driven oracle with the help of Umbrella Network. With the help of the latter’s architecture, we are in line with our objectives of making MahaDAO a fully community-driven DAO.”
Umbrella Network is a community-owned Layer-2 oracle network that batches data and proofs for providing inexpensive, scalable, and secure information. By using a Merkle Tree that is rolled up and anchored to Ethereum and a proof-of-stake consensus model, Umbrella can write multiple data points on a single on-chain transaction. This allows each node to validate thousands of transactions for the price it would take to validate one transaction on other networks. As a result, Umbrella is poised to offer many more data pairs for crypto markets as well as for equities and derivatives.
