Smart contracts need oracles to access real world data. ZAP makes it easy to find the data you need and plug it into a smart contract.

Smart contracts hold many promises, allowing for the automatic and decentralized distribution of value and other digital assets in a secure, predetermined way. One of the drawbacks of the deterministic nature of smart contracts is that they cannot access information that lives outside of the blockchain they reside on. In other words, if you want to make a smart contract that is based on the current exchange rate of ETH/BTC, you need a way to get that information (likely sourced from a trusted crypto exchange’s API) onto the blockchain so that it becomes accessible by the smart contract. The aspect of a smart contract that does this is known as an oracle and that is where ZAP comes in. Oracles are necessary for smart contracts and decentralized applications (ÐApps) to grow beyond token sales and decentralized Ponzi schemes and Zap.org is the platform for creating oracles to securely and reliably deliver data from any external source onto the blockchain.

Zap allows data providers (i.e. the creators of oracles) to list their data feeds/oracles on the Zap Store for free, a “one stop shop” marketplace for finding the data feeds you need, ready to be accessed by a smart contract. Can’t find what you’re looking for? You can create your own oracle with just an API and the Zap.tech oracle creation toolkit. Alternatively, you can also fund a community bounty for the creation of a new oracle. Perhaps the most exciting feature of the Zap platform is the ability to create customizable bonding curves, algorithmic price functions that change the cost of subscribing to an oracle based on the number of users subscribed. In other words, a data feed may start out being relatively cheap in order to draw in the early adopters, but become more expensive (thus profitable) as it becomes more widely used.

All of these exciting features are facilitated by the ZAP token, which is used to allow a user access to Zap oracles by mapping the address the token was sent from to the whitelist of accounts that can interact with the oracle. If you are ready to join this innovative data solution, you’d be happy to know that ZAP is now available in Lumi Wallet: you can keep, send and even exchange ZAP in one place.

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