Tellor Tributes (TRB): A Crypto Project Review

Tellor Tributes is a decentralized oracle network that gathers and structures high-quality, timely information about crypto projects.

In blockchain ecosystems, oracles fulfill the critical role of collecting external data—ranging from asset prices, tokenomics, and on-chain activities, to even climate and weather phenomena—and integrating it into the smart contracts of client projects. Tellor ensures both the security and authenticity of this data.

Let’s dive deeper into the Tellor Tributes project, exploring its primary functions and how it works. It’s equally fascinating to review the applications and potential of the native TRB token, which has seen a remarkable 500% growth between September and October 2023. 

Origin

The project was initiated in 2017, right when smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain were gaining significant traction. The primary issue faced by blockchains was the lack of a unified, reliable, and timely source of data.Tellor Tributes set out to resolve this challenge, progressing through several key phases:

• Idea inception and basic planning in 2017.
• Development and testing of the protocol in 2018.
• Launch of the main project version and the TRB token in 2019.
  
  

Despite unfavorable market conditions, Tellor Tributes stayed true to their course and continued to evolve as a decentralized oracle. The leadership team at Tellor includes Brenda Loya (CEO), Nicholas Fett (CTO), and Michael Zemrose (CSO).

Funding Rounds

Despite having a substantial market capitalization of $280 million and a robust overall economic valuation, the investments attracted by Tellor have been surprisingly modest. The company has secured investments from two entities: the crypto exchange Binance and MakerDAO, a company specializing in the issuance of decentralized stablecoins.

In total, the project has raised $400,000 in three funding rounds. 

The Platform's Working Mechanics

The foundational principle of decentralized oracles is the ability to seamlessly add and validate data. Tellor is equipped to gather various types of information, including:

• Basic spot prices
• Complex pricing specifications, especially for inverse tokens and liquidity tokens
• DAO voting results
• On-chain activity of individual users
• Trading volumes, transaction numbers, and other specialized data
  
  

Ethereum's blockchain is inherently capable of processing only a limited amount of data, such as tracking the balances of cryptocurrency addresses or token migrations. If network participants require additional data, it has to be sourced from an external service. However, relying on a single such service, even if it's licensed and validated by numerous participants, could significantly diminish the decentralization of the system. Unlike these centralized solutions, the Tellor oracle facilitates the creation of a decentralized system, wherein information is verified and added by diverse users.

Tellor Tributes introduces a range of internal features that elevate the project's standing in the data processing domain:

• Subjectivity: Any individual can challenge the information added to the Tellor network, as well as contribute their own data.
• Finality: Data within the Tellor network only gains validity after a certain period, during which no participant has contested it, or if any such attempts were unsuccessful. The longer a decision remains unchallenged in the chain, the higher the likelihood of its validity.
• Equal Powers: The Tellor team and developers do not possess any additional rights or permissions within the network's internal structure and operate as regular users.
  
  

Presently, Tellor operates within the Ethereum, Polygon, Gnosis, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Filecoin FVM networks, as well as their respective testnets. 

TRB Token

Incorporating data into smart contracts necessitates bids from participants who aspire to become reporters. In most cases, users pay for the oracle services in the native TRB token. TRB is also used to remunerate network participants, safeguard the network, and in the data verification voting system.

 As of the time this article was written, the TRB token exhibited the following market characteristics:

• Asset Price: $46
• Market Capitalization: $118 million
• Circulating Supply: 2.48 million 
• Maximum Supply: 2.53 million
• Average Daily Trading Volume: $37 million
• All-Time High: $161.12
• All-Time Low: $0.01
  
  

TRB is traded on cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance, OKX, WhiteBIT, Gate, and KuCoin, among others. For a comprehensive list of trading platforms, you can refer to CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap, under the “Markets” section.

TRB Price Dynamics

Over the past few months, TRB has shown a phenomenal performance. From September to the beginning of October 2023, the asset increased by 500%, reaching a new annual high of $125.2. Pinpointing the exact reasons for this growth is challenging, but this event coincided with the news about the completion of the SWIFT payment system's testing of the Chainlink protocol, which is also a data oracle. 

Representatives from SWIFT expressed their hope that in the future, similar projects would help ensure compatibility between different protocols and unlock the potential of asset tokenization. By the end of September, the TRB daily trading volume occasionally exceeded $200 million, surpassing the project's market capitalization.