New Oracle Architecture

Introduction

Tigris Trade is a decentralized leverage trading platform with up to 100x leverage on crypto and 500x leverage on commodities and forex. Tigris uses a signature-based price oracle, allowing users to open trades instantly with zero slippage.

Pros and cons.

Tigris’ unique architecture allows trades to be settled without the need to wait for a callback transaction. This makes Tigris the fastest decentralized platform in terms of order settlement, with zero price slippage. Users can open their trades at the exact price they see on the user interface (UI). This architecture has not been used before in any other leverage trading platform, so there are no previous experiments to learn from.

This architecture is great for normal traders, as it provides them with the best trading experience. However, it does have its problems. Here’s how it works: users receive signed price updates that are included in their transactions. This allows the contract to know and verify the opening price. However, this creates a front-running problem. Bots can listen to the signed prices from our oracle and compare them with “real” prices, waiting for a significant price difference between the two in order to open a trade with an unfair “old” price, giving them a higher chance of winning. Without callbacks, it’s not possible for the contract to obtain the real price at the moment the transaction is confirmed.

Solution

We are implementing something similar to Chainlink’s low latency oracles. Our oracle will sign and save prices every second. A keeper will utilize the price at which the open transaction is confirmed, opening the trade with reduced (but not always zero) slippage. Normal traders may not experience any slippage when opening new trades, adding trades on top of existing ones, or when closing, taking profits, setting stop losses, or placing limit orders. These actions will all have zero slippage and guaranteed prices, without the need for callbacks.

Why is that good?

Using this new architecture for opening trades will not only help Tigris fix the front-running problem but also have additional benefits. Integrating Tigris into aggregators was challenging for other platforms because it required more work due to the need for a signed price stream in the frontend to be included in the transactions. With the new architecture, this requirement will be eliminated, making it much easier to integrate Tigris into other platforms. It will also allow us to lower our spread, which was temporarily higher than normal to help prevent front-running. Additionally, it will enhance the security of the funds in the vault.

What’s next

The contracts have been completed and sent to auditors. Deployment is expected to take place within a week. The new staking contracts have been audited, finalized, and will be deployed shortly after the new trading contracts. Weekly competitions will be revamped and will now include options.