What Is an Oracle and Why Is It Crucial for Smart Contracts in Financial Derivatives?
An Oracle is a third-party service that securely feeds real-world data, such as asset prices, interest rates, or market volatility indices, onto the blockchain for smart contracts to use. It is crucial because blockchains are deterministic and cannot access off-chain data natively.
For financial derivatives, an Oracle provides the critical price reference point needed to trigger contract execution, calculate collateral requirements, and determine final settlement payouts.