Michael James, the head of institutional business development at Douro Labs — the company that developed the Pyth high-speed blockchain oracle network — told Cointelegraph that oracle networks like Pyth are disrupting the $50 billion financial data industry that provides critical price information to exchanges, brokerages, trading firms, and other institutional entities.

In an interview at Consensus 2025, the executive said that Pyth Network’s data pull model sets it apart from traditional pricing oracles, allowing customers to pay for data on demand, reducing costs for institutions reliant on real-time market data.

Differences between pull and push models in oracle systems. Source: Pyth Network

According to the executive, the financial data industry is currently monopolized by around eight major providers that continually raise prices on clients arbitrarily. James added:

“These data vendors have no competition in traditional finance, and so they have all the pricing power in the world. There is no substitutability; whether you are a banker or hedge fund and you are trading more or less — you still have to buy that data for compliance reasons.”

The high costs of financial data stifle innovation and prohibit small to medium-sized businesses from taking part in the global financial services industry, further concentrating the sector in the hands of a few large players and preventing novel use cases from emerging.

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Pyth experiences significant growth in 2024

The Pyth oracle network provides real-time market data and price feeds for cryptocurrencies, equities, foreign currency exchange markets (FOREX), commodities, and rates.

In December 2024, Pyth announced the launch of real-time oil pricing data on over 80 blockchain networks.

The real-time oil price feeds track data from West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent Crude Oil, aggregating the data from multiple sources and clearing the path for energy derivatives instruments and energy trading to take place on blockchain rails.

A breakdown of market share between blockchain oracle providers. Source: DeFiLlama

Throughout 2024, Pyth network increased its total value secured (TVS), a metric that tracks the amount of capital secured by an oracle network, 46-fold.

According to data from DeFiLlama, Pyth currently commands roughly 11.3% of the blockchain oracle market, up from the approximately 10.8% in market share reported in September 2024.

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