Rialo Quiz 27.0 #9 @RialoHQ @RialoKorea “Oracle tax” refers to: 1️⃣ Free data feeds 2️⃣ Expensive external data services 3️⃣ Blockchain rewards 4️⃣ Gas optimization techniques The answer is 2️⃣ Expensive external data services. Blockchains operate within an onchain environment, but many applications need information that exists outside the chain. Asset prices. Market data. Real-world events. Credit information. Other external data. The blockchain cannot simply assume that this information is already available onchain. This is where oracles and other external data services come into the picture. An application can depend on an external service to retrieve information from the real world and make it available to the blockchain. But that connection introduces another layer between the application and the data it needs. And that layer comes with a cost. This is the idea behind the term “Oracle tax.” It refers to the additional cost created when blockchain applications have to rely on external data infrastructure to obtain the information required for execution. The cost isn't necessarily limited to the price of a data feed. There can also be infrastructure, integration, latency, maintenance, and coordination involved in keeping external data connected to an onchain application. This becomes more significant as applications require data continuously rather than only occasionally. Consider a financial application. If an asset's price needs to update continuously, the system needs a continuous flow of external market information. A Prediction Market can also require external information to determine what happened in the real world after trading ends. An RWA application may need external information for pricing, lending, trading, and risk management. In each case, the application depends on a bridge between the real world and the blockchain. This connects directly with the middleware problem discussed in Rialo's Learn Papers. Middleware can include feeds, indexing, scheduling, bridging, and other services that sit between applications and blockchain infrastructure. The more functionality that exists outside the blockchain, the more connections developers need to maintain. Rialo's architecture approaches the data problem differently. Rialo Stream is designed as a native data-feed layer for DeFi and RWAs. The broader Rialo system also includes Rialo Read Path, which provides direct access to validator data and state. This is important because the objective isn't simply to put more data onchain. The data needs to become usable by applications that depend on it. We've already seen this in Rialo's real-time financial data architecture, where 1,337 live-updating tickers represent real-world financial assets. Those feeds can then support applications involving pricing, lending, trading, and risk management. The same principle applies to RWAs. Tokenizing a real-world asset is only one part of the process. The application may still need continuous information about that asset and the broader market around it. So the infrastructure connecting real-world data → blockchain → application logic becomes a fundamental part of the system. The “oracle tax” describes the cost of that external dependency. And this is where Rialo's architecture connects to the quiz: by making data feeds a native part of the infrastructure, Rialo is designed to reduce the dependence on separate external data integrations for applications that need real-world information. The answer is 2️⃣ Expensive external data services.