oracles
Overview
Accurate, manipulation-resistant price feeds are critical to Parthenon Fi's collateral management. LTV calculations, margin calls, and liquidation decisions all depend on real-time asset pricing. Parthenon uses a dual-oracle architecture to ensure reliability and manipulation resistance.
Dual-Oracle Architecture
Primary: Chainlink Price Feeds
Chainlink is the industry-standard decentralized oracle network. For each supported collateral type, Chainlink provides:
Aggregated price data from multiple independent data sources
Decentralized consensus — no single data provider can manipulate the feed
Heartbeat updates ensuring freshness (typically every 1% price deviation or 60-minute heartbeat)
On-chain verifiable price data with cryptographic proofs
Secondary: Exchange Aggregator TWAP
A time-weighted average price (TWAP) calculated across major exchanges:
Binance: Highest volume exchange globally
Coinbase: Largest US-regulated exchange
Kraken: Major European exchange with institutional focus
The TWAP is calculated over a configurable window (default: 15 minutes) to smooth out short-term volatility and wash trading.
Feed Divergence Handling
TICS continuously compares primary and secondary feeds. When they diverge:
Normal
< 2%
Use primary (Chainlink) for all calculations
Elevated
2–5%
Log divergence. Use more conservative price for margin purposes.
Critical
> 5%
Flag for manual review. Pause automated liquidation. Notify all parties.
The "more conservative price" means the price that results in a higher LTV — ensuring that margin calls are triggered when they should be, not suppressed by a potentially manipulated feed.
Collateral-Specific Feeds
BTC
Chainlink BTC/USD
Exchange TWAP
Deepest liquidity. Most reliable feeds.
ETH
Chainlink ETH/USD
Exchange TWAP
High reliability.
SOL
Chainlink SOL/USD
Exchange TWAP
Lower liquidity — wider divergence tolerance.
RWA (Treasuries)
Canton-native feeds
DTCC reference data
Specialized feeds for tokenized assets.
RWA (Commodities)
DMCC FinX
Commodity exchange data
Integration with DMCC commodity tokenization.
Oracle Attack Resistance
Parthenon's dual-oracle architecture mitigates common oracle attack vectors:
Flash Loan Attacks: Flash loans that manipulate AMM-based prices do not affect Chainlink's aggregated feeds or exchange TWAP calculations. The dual-feed cross-reference adds an additional layer of protection.
Stale Price Exploitation: Chainlink's heartbeat mechanism ensures prices are updated at minimum intervals. TICS additionally monitors feed staleness and raises alerts if a feed has not updated within the expected window.
Feed Manipulation: Manipulating both Chainlink and the exchange TWAP simultaneously would require influencing multiple independent data sources across multiple exchanges — an impractical attack vector for well-supported assets.
Custodian Verification: As an additional safeguard, custodians maintain their own independent price feeds. Major discrepancies between TICS calculations and custodian valuations trigger manual review before any liquidation is executed.
RWA Price Feeds
Tokenized real-world assets require specialized price feeds that differ from crypto oracle infrastructure:
US Treasury Tokens: Priced against DTCC reference data and Bloomberg/Reuters treasury yield curves
Real Estate Tokens: Periodic appraisal-based valuations supplemented by market comparables
Commodity Tokens: DMCC FinX integration providing commodity exchange pricing
RWA price feeds typically update less frequently than crypto feeds (daily vs. real-time) but with lower volatility. LTV parameters for RWA collateral are adjusted accordingly — higher Initial LTV (55–65%) with longer Cure Periods to reflect the different price dynamics.