In ancient India an oracle was referred to as Akaashwhani, which means a voice without a body, unseen, or a voice coming from the sky... That is why we have called this hackathon the Akshwani Hæck, an unseen voice going straight into the blocks!

Oracles, in the blockchain sense of the word, are an important part of the technological stack required for a wide variety of decentralized applications. They are a link between the physical world and the virtual reality of blockchain platforms and an essential part of the promise of smart contracts.

What we are in fact talking about are tools that allow blockchains to learn the outcome of relevant events. 

All the applications running on a public blockchain usually require “triggers” in order to provide a service, usually in the form of an automated action. Some of these triggers could be coming from specific users — for example initiating a transaction or instructing a smart-contract. 

Others, however, rely on information provided by oracles, and æternity offers them out of the box for the best user experience, but also for the best developer experience, security and optimization of costs.

Our Approach to Oracles

At æternity we have immediatelly realised the fundamental importance of oracles for the future of decentralized economy. Thus, we decided to make oracle services part of æternity’s core blockchain protocol. By doing this we are addressing three related concepts — scalability, data format and cost.

Thus, æternity provides a mechanism whereby oracle operators can register with the blockchain to answer queries directed at them. Smart-contracts pay to pose questions to an oracle and the fee compensates the oracle operator for interfacing with the outside world — to bring in data and forward it to the smart contract.

There’s no limit to the kind of data that oracles can bring into the blockchain but it’s important to note that both queries and answers are posted to the blockchain and are available for later access by smart contracts.

Advantages of æternity’s Oracles

• Incorporated inside the main chain.
• No need to install anything. 
• Immutability and open availability of all oracle replies.
• Cheap to create, query and reply to.
• Flexible data formats for creation, query and replies.
• As decentralized as the main æternity chain.
• Can be used together with other unique features of æternity such as state channels, or the æternity Naming System. 

Some examples 

“Has temperature higher than 35 °C been reported everyday in a period of  30 consecutive days?”

if “Yes” then a certain amount of cryptocurrency is sent to an address(es). You guessed it, we are referring to the decentralized insurance use-case.

By having sensors reporting on events, we can automate a wide range of insurance-related actions, without the need of an intermediary. Sensors can of course act in tandem with user oracles. For example, after the sensor oracles have reported “Yes”, one or more user oracles need to confirm that the information is correct.

Decentralized insurance is just an example use of machine oracles. 

Here are some additional examples:

• Price Feeds / DeFi: DeFi applications heavily rely on oracles to have accurate and secure data feeds, the higher the number of oracles used, the higher security as no one can tamper with multiple data feeds. If you only rely on one source you might get in trouble. 
• Supply chain management:  Containers or packages equipped with sensors can trigger smart-contract execution based on location
• Components life-cycle monitoring:  Triggering purchases of replacements before system failure.
• Greenhouse emission purchases: Automatic debit or credit of a company account based on greenhouse gas sensor readings (or any type of reading in an industrial installation). This relates to Emissions Trading Schemes established worldwide.
• High-pollution subsidies: Citizens receiving subsidies from the government or a company for living in an area with over-the-norm pollution detected.
• Tollbooth payments: Automatic payments for using public or private transportation infrastructure.

Extra mile : State channels

Want to buidl something really powerful? Then use another of æternity’s unique features, and have real world data triggering off-chain smart contracts executions without any scalability limit and without any fee!! 

A State Channel is a two-way interaction channel between two parties. State Channels make it possible to execute smart contracts off-chain, without fees, while keeping the same level of security that the æternity blockchain already provides, making use of its other unique features, and significantly increasing privacy. 

Read more about state channels here and in the resources section. 

OR BUILD ON SUPERHERO.COM

Superhero.com is a new social network that leverages the full power of decentralization technologies. Superhero builds a new framework for social and financial interactions with special superpowers. Some of the first superpowers available through Superhero are decentralized, censorship resistant peer-to-peer tipping to content creators — completely KYC free and permissionless. The Superhero platform also provides users with Superpowers like a decentralized voting app and the ability to create and join private video rooms in which participants can send and receive tips. And yes, you guessed it — Superhero is fully open source, allowing the community to directly participate in development to create and add new models of financial interactions to Superhero.com.

Try Superhero.com

Fork us on Github

LEARN. ENJOY. BUIDL SOMETHING MEANINGFUL!

Open to everyone

Best hæcks are executed by multidisciplinary teams, so it doesn’t matter whether you have a technical, economic, humanistic, artistic, or other background — we want you for the Akshwani Hæck!

Learn and enjoy

The hæck will start with a series of webinars to give you the necessary insight to develop a meaningful, exciting solution. You can always catch up on our past webinars of course.

Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

You will be constantly supported by an amazing network of mentors to help you throughout the hæck — learn as you build!

Design-Oriented Approach

Unsure of what to develop in the hæck? Want to find a real problem to solve with your hæck project? We’ve got you covered. Before starting to code,  we’ll help you answer those questions and create solutions with design-oriented development techniques.

Networking

A remote hackathon is a fun and effective way to meet interesting people from all over the world while you grow in the blockchain space.

The day after

How many potentially meaningful projects are forgotten when a hackathon ends? Too many promising projects are left behind. Meaningful projects might get further support after the hæckathon to make your use case a working product — with real users.

Powered by Superhero

With the Superhero wallet, the participants will be able to send and receive some crypto-love during the hæckathon. Have you ever received a tip during a video-conference?  

ABOUT ÆTERNITY

æternity blockchain is an Erlang-based scalable smart contract platform engineered by programming pioneers to address some of the most fundamental challenges native to earlier blockchains. By redesigning blockchain technology at the protocol level, the æternity developer community has enabled the core protocol to understand and integrate a rich set of functionalities out of the box.

$25,000 in prizes

• Use of AE protocol unique features
  How critical are the unique features of aeternity protocol for the success of the use case? Judges will evaluate the use of embedded oracles, state channels, or the ae naming service in the submitted project.
• Achieved development: Completeness of delivered submissions
  Judges will evaluate how complete the submission are in terms of development made during the haeackathon. Projects opting for the top tier prizes should be functional products,but judges will assess the overall usability and UX of the submitted solutions.
• Feasibility: How easily can the solution be implemented?
  Is the concept sound enough to gain traction with real users? Are there significant challenges to be solved before the solution can be a real use case?
• Innovation: How unique is the concept of the solution?
  To what extent are the proposals beyond currently available solutions? Is there any significant differentiation? Does the submitted project disrupt any industry? Is the approach sound enough to tackle the identified problem?
• Impact: How will this solution help solving current users's problems?
  Is the proposal bringing a significant improvement in the access to financial services for people outside the traditional financial services? Is there a significant market willing to use the submitted solutions?
• Usability and product
  How easy, attractive and useful for the audience is to use the delivered solution?