Oracles – How Often Are Chainlink Price Feeds Updated?

chainlinkoracles

I browsed through the Chainlink docs but I couldn't find an answer for how often prices are updated.

My understanding is that they have a rule that if the markets become super volatile, they immediately post an update to the data feeds. But normally prices are updated once every so often (1 hour?).

Could someone familiar with Chainlink answer this?

Best Answer

There are currently 2 "trigger" parameters that kick off Chainlink nodes to update.

1. A deviation parameter

The Chainlink nodes are monitoring the prices of the assets off-chain. If the real-world price of an asset deviates past some interval, it will trigger all the nodes to do an update. Right now, most Ethereum data feeds have a 0.5% deviation threshold.

2. A time interval

If the price stays within the deviation parameters, it will only trigger an update every X minutes / hours.

You can see these parameters on data.chain.link on an example like ETH / USD.

Related Solutions

Chainlink – How to Get All Historical Data from Chainlink Price Feeds

You can view the entire history of reference contracts, you'll want to use the getPreviousAnswer method below, and input how many answers back you'd like to go.

pragma solidity ^0.6.0;

import "@chainlink/contracts/src/v0.6/dev/AggregatorInterface.sol";

contract ReferenceConsumer {
  AggregatorInterface internal ref;

  constructor(address _aggregator) public {
    ref = AggregatorInterface(_aggregator);
  }

  function getLatestAnswer() public returns (int256) {
    return ref.latestAnswer();
  }

  function getLatestTimestamp() public returns (uint256) {
    return ref.latestTimestamp();
  }

  function getPreviousAnswer(uint256 _back) public returns (int256) {
    uint256 latest = ref.latestRound();
    require(_back <= latest, "Not enough history");
    return ref.getAnswer(latest - _back);
  }

  function getPreviousTimestamp(uint256 _back) public returns (uint256) {
    uint256 latest = ref.latestRound();
    require(_back <= latest, "Not enough history");
    return ref.getTimestamp(latest - _back);
  }
}

Chainlink Oracles – How Oracles (Chainlink) Are Deterministic Despite Changing Values with Each Call?

You're correct in saying that blockchains are deterministic, oracles however, operate outside of blockchains. Oracles deliver data the same way that people make transactions.

When you replay a blockchain that uses oracle data, your replay what the oracle returned. In the same way when you replay a blockchain that has human transactions, you replay the result of those transactions.

An oracle works by delivering data in a transaction. So the oracle only delivers the data once, and that becomes a part of the historical transaction data of the blockchain.

Does that make sense?