Oracle Integration
Oracles provide the price feeds that Kaskad uses to value collateral, calculate health factors, and trigger liquidations. Accurate and manipulation-resistant price data is critical to the protocol's security.
Oracle V1 — Launch Configuration
At mainnet launch, Kaskad integrates with enhanced existing oracle infrastructure. This provides reliable price feeds for supported assets using established oracle networks that are already battle-tested across DeFi.
The V1 oracle setup prioritizes reliability and availability, using proven price feed mechanisms to ensure the protocol can operate safely from day one.
Oracle V2 — Trustless Oracle (Roadmap)
Kaskad's roadmap includes the development of a trustless, Kaspa-aligned oracle system designed by Eliott Méa, Kaskad's Lead Oracle Architect (ETH Zürich research background, supervised by Yonatan Sompolinsky).
The V2 oracle is designed around several core properties:
Incentive compatibility — the oracle mechanism is structured so that reporting accurate prices is always the economically rational strategy for participants. Attempting to manipulate price feeds is designed to be more costly than any potential profit from the manipulation.
Trust minimization — the V2 oracle aims to reduce reliance on trusted third-party data providers. Instead of depending on a small set of centralized oracle operators, the system distributes reporting responsibility across a wider set of participants with aligned incentives.
Kaspa-native alignment — the oracle design leverages properties of Kaspa's blockDAG architecture, including its high throughput (10 BPS) and fast block times, to enable more frequent and granular price updates than would be practical on slower chains.
Enhanced verifiability — price reports include cryptographic proofs that allow any participant to verify the accuracy and integrity of reported data without trusting the reporter.
Oracle's Role in the Protocol
Oracles feed into several critical protocol functions:
Collateral Valuation
The value of a user's collateral is calculated using oracle price feeds. This determines their maximum borrowing power (based on LTV ratios) and their current health factor.
Liquidation Triggers
When oracle-reported prices cause a borrower's health factor to drop below 1.0, the position becomes eligible for liquidation. Oracle accuracy directly determines whether liquidations happen at the right time — too slow or too manipulable, and the protocol accrues bad debt.
Milestone Validation
TVL milestones are validated using TWAL (Time-Weighted Average Liquidity) and TWAP (Time-Weighted Average Price) derived from oracle data. This prevents artificial TVL inflation through wash-trading or price manipulation.
Risk Parameter Calibration
Oracle reliability per asset informs the risk parameters assigned to that asset (LTV, liquidation threshold, liquidation penalty). Assets with less reliable price feeds receive more conservative parameters.
Oracle Upgrade Path
The transition from V1 to V2 is designed to be non-disruptive:
- V1 operates at launch with proven oracle infrastructure
- V2 is developed and tested in parallel
- V2 is deployed alongside V1 for validation (dual-feed period)
- Governance approves migration to V2 as the primary oracle once confidence thresholds are met
- V1 remains available as a fallback mechanism
This staged approach ensures that the protocol never depends on unproven oracle infrastructure for live financial operations.