Let's discuss a frequently overlooked issue in the community—large liquidations caused by oracle failures. Do you know how many of those sudden chain reactions of liquidations are actually not due to hacking but simply because on-chain data took a breath?

I remember very clearly one time when the market was actually quite stable, and suddenly a lending protocol exploded. Liquidations followed one after another, like firecrackers going off one after another. At that time, the community group was buzzing: where did this price come from? Was there a problem with the chain? It was only later that I understood, the chain itself was fine; the problem was with the feed—the quote that was fed in— it jittered a little. Just that one jitter, and millions of dollars evaporated.

So, what exactly is an oracle? Basically, it’s the channel that transmits data from the real world to the blockchain. If the "note" sent through this channel is wrong, the smart contract on-chain will execute based on this incorrect instruction, without a second thought. The contract never pauses to think or doubt the data; it just mechanically executes the code step by step.

This is a fundamental contradiction in blockchain design. The reason blockchain is considered revolutionary is that it repeatedly emphasizes the principle of distrust—don’t trust any single entity. But in reality, on-chain data can’t just appear out of thin air; someone has to bring external information in through some route. Oracles play this role, and they are also the weak link in this otherwise perfect system.

What if the data fed in is delayed, erroneous, or maliciously tampered with? No one can stop the contract from executing. It just does what it’s programmed to do, without hesitation. This feature is advantageous in normal scenarios, but when data quality is questionable, it becomes a ticking time bomb. A sudden crash or a faulty quote could cause the entire ecosystem to pay a huge price.

Recently, some projects have emerged aiming to solve this problem. For example, decentralized oracle networks like APRO are trying to add a checkpoint before data enters the chain. The core idea is quite straightforward: instead of passively receiving all data, why not proactively ask—does this data look reasonable?

APRO integrates an AI-based data review mechanism. Before the data is officially written into the blockchain, the system performs a rationality check. This doesn’t mean AI can completely prevent data falsification, but at least it can filter out obviously abnormal quotes, greatly reducing liquidation storms caused by extreme deviations.

This kind of solution supports two main data supply modes: one is off-chain data proactively pushed to the application layer at regular intervals, and the other is actively pulled when needed. Regardless of the method, data must undergo a pre-validation process before being used by the contract. This way, even if there’s a single point of failure or price volatility, there’s buffer space to catch and correct it.

Of course, this kind of solution isn’t a silver bullet. The governance costs of decentralized oracles, incentives for validation nodes, the accuracy of AI models, and other factors are new challenges. But compared to the previous completely passive approach of accepting arbitrary data, it’s already an improvement. At least now, someone is seriously thinking about this problem rather than letting data risks continue to accumulate.