Oracles

Templar Protocol relies on external price oracles to determine asset valuations when calculating collateralization ratios and performing liquidations.

Pyth Network is the primary oracle provider (documentation).

Pyth is a pull oracle, meaning that the price feeds are updated as-needed instead of continuously. As such, interactions with Templar markets should always be preceded by a call to the appropriate oracle contract to update the necessary asset prices using a proof provided by Pyth.

More information about how to perform this update on NEAR can be found on Pyth's documentation site.

Oracle Addresses

Price Identifiers

Price identifiers for Pyth Network assets can be found on their documentation site.

LST Oracle Adapter

For Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs), Templar uses a custom oracle adapter (lst.oracle.tmplr.near) to derive the LST price from the underlying asset price(s).

Price Feed Configuration

Each market is configured with the following fields:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
pub struct PriceOracleConfiguration {
    /// Account ID of the oracle contract.
    pub account_id: AccountId,
    /// Price identifier of the collateral asset in the oracle contract.
    pub collateral_asset_price_id: PriceIdentifier,
    /// Collateral asset decimals, to convert the oracle price.
    pub collateral_asset_decimals: i32,
    /// Price identifier of the borrow asset in the oracle contract.
    pub borrow_asset_price_id: PriceIdentifier,
    /// Borrow asset decimals, to convert the oracle price.
    pub borrow_asset_decimals: i32,
    /// Maximum price age to accept from the oracle, after which the price
    /// will be considered stale and rejected.
    pub price_maximum_age_s: u32,
}
}

Update Frequency and Freshness

• Update Frequency: As-needed (pull model)
• On-Chain Updates: Pulled on-demand by protocol operations
• Price Staleness: Configurable maximum age per market (typically 60 seconds)

Price Validation

Markets validate price freshness before use. If prices are stale, users must push fresh price data to the oracle contracts

• Operations that require prices (borrow, liquidate) will fail.
• Users must push updates for fresh price data.

There is currently no backup oracle available.

Oracle Security Measures

• Confidence Intervals: Pyth prices include confidence bands. The lower bound is used for collateral valuations, and the upper bound for liability valuations.
• Multiple Data Sources: Pyth aggregates from multiple price providers.
• Time-Weighted Averages: Market contracts use the exponentially-weighted moving average (EMA) price information.
• Maximum Age Limits: Markets reject stale price data using a configurable expiration duration.

Oracle Failure Scenarios

Temporary Outage

• The vast majority of operations will cease to function until fresh price data are available.
• Users can still withdraw collateral from positions with zero liability.
• No borrows or liquidations are supported until fresh price data are available.

Price Manipulation Attack

• Markets will reject stale prices automatically.
• Defensive asset valuations will protect markets from insolvency in most cases.
• The required maintenance MCR will protect borrowers from unexpected liquidation in most cases.