Pyth Network

What is Pyth Network (PYTH)?

Pyth Network is a decentralized oracle that delivers market prices to blockchain applications. Smart contracts cannot see prices from outside their own chain, and lending markets, derivatives platforms and stablecoin systems all depend on accurate price inputs. Pyth supplies those inputs for crypto assets and for other markets such as commodities, with new price feeds added over time.

Instead of relying on anonymous node operators who copy prices from public sources, Pyth takes data from the firms that produce it. Publishers submit prices to the protocol, which combines them into a single feed with a confidence interval that shows how much the contributors agree. The PYTH token launched in November 2023.

How Pyth works

Pyth follows a pull model. Rather than pushing every price update to every chain constantly, the protocol makes updates available and an application pulls the latest price on chain when it needs one, paying a small update fee. The same feeds can serve applications on many blockchains.

• Price feeds: real-time data for crypto, and for other financial markets, delivered to developers across networks.
• Pyth Pro: a subscription data service for institutions and advanced users that offers low-latency delivery.
• Entropy: a verifiable random number generator for EVM smart contracts.

PYTH supply and token design

The total supply of PYTH is fixed at 10 billion tokens. About 1.5 billion, or 15%, were circulating at launch, and the remaining 85% was locked and scheduled to unlock 6, 18, 30 and 42 months after launch. Allocations were set at 22% for publisher rewards, 52% for ecosystem growth, 10% for protocol development, 6% for community and launch, and 10% for private sales.

PYTH is the governance token of the Pyth DAO. Staked tokens carry voting weight on parameters such as update fees, reward distribution, feed listings and publisher permissions. Through Oracle Integrity Staking, publishers stake PYTH as collateral behind their data, and other holders can delegate to them, sharing both rewards and the risk of slashing if data is inaccurate.

Live circulating supply is shown in the market data on this page.

Official information is on pyth.network.

What to check before using PYTH

• A large part of the supply unlocks on a schedule, so token distribution changes over time and can add selling pressure.
• Oracle Integrity Staking involves slashing, so delegating to a publisher puts your staked tokens at risk if that publisher submits bad data.
• Oracle failures or stale prices can cause losses in the applications that use them, regardless of the token.
• Governance power depends on staked balances and can be concentrated among large holders.
• PYTH exists on several networks, so confirm the correct token address from the official site before buying or bridging.