Decentralizing Frontend

In the quest for building decentralized censorship-resistant systems, not only is it important to decentralize the underlying data structure and execution environment (as does Ethereum) but it is also necessary to decentralize the frontend medium users interact with. A decentralized system is only as strong as its weakest link.

Opensource Chainlink Aggregator Frontend

Chainlink provides decentralized trusted external data feeds by the means of aggregation of multiple independent Oracle operators responsible for updating the data. The BTC/USD feed for example has 21 nodes updating the price feed for any 1% movement. The median of these nodes is reported by the Aggregator contract. As an example, the mainnet BTC/USD contract is deployed at 0xF5fff180082d6017036B771bA883025c654BC935.

Chainlink currently provides a frontend UI for their “Reference Contracts” at feeds.chain.link. While opensource, this frontend was a bit obscure to customize and we found ourselves limited in our ability to add our own custom Aggregators and experiment with new ideas. We also wanted to give users the ability to add their own feeds with no coding necessary.

We created our own opensource aggregator UI, currently deployed at feeds.link to help you monitor the Chainlink data feeds, our own Vulcan data feeds, and your own custom Aggregator data feeds. Note that while these are the feeds we chose to currently display by default, anyone can deploy their own version of the frontend to display their own data feeds. Also in the works is a feature to enable user-added Aggregator feeds (see below), which would therefore not necessarily require a custom deployment to add a new data feed.

Chainlink BTC/USD Aggregator

Having a customizable Aggregator frontend is especially useful in the context of testing a deployment as instead of tracking individual transactions, we are quickly able to get a high-level historical overview of our Oracle Aggregator contracts.

Checkout vulcan-aggregator on Github at https://github.com/leovigna/vulcan-ui

Data Feeds

Vulcan Data Feeds

In addition to displaying Chainlink feeds, feeds.link also displays Vulcan Link managed Ropsten Testnet data feeds to help you in your development of Oracle-linked smart contracts. Vulcan Link is currently operating replication of all Chainlink feeds on the Ropsten Testnet. For example, check out our Ropsten testnet BTC/USD. Vulcan Link also provides more experimental data such as COVID-19 cases (as reported by John Hopkins University) and US market indices.

User Added Data Feeds

NOTE: This feature is still in development and may break from time to time.

While the opensource nature of the Aggregator Dashboard enables anyone to deploy a frontend to track their own feeds, we also wanted to make it possible for users to add their own custom Aggregators to track. We created an Add Contract section to enable a user to add an already deployed Aggregator contract to the UI. All data regarding the user added contracts is just stored locally so no accounts/signup is required.

Add a custom Aggregator contract to view.

About Vulcan Link

We are a Paris-based Chainlink node operator working on actively maintaining 30+ reliable data feeds and developing decentralized applications that leverage smart contracts with external data. We believe in building trust through transparency by contributing to opensource projects. If you’d like us to add other data feeds to feeds.link, feel free to reach out through our links below! Also checkout the project at https://github.com/leovigna/vulcan-ui

Find us at online at vulcan.link

Follow us on Twitter @vulcanlink for updates on new projects like this one.

If you’d like to contribute, join us on Telegram and Discord