UMA (Universal Market Access) is a optimistic oracle on Ethereum.
What is Oracle?
Oracles are an important part of blockchain infrastructure. They facilitate untrusted communication between the outside world and on-chain environments.
They have advanced decentralized finance (DeFi) and many parts of the Blockchain industry, including Web3 applications. (for example: ChainLink, BAND Protocol, API3)
What is an Optimistic Oracle?
Optimistic oracle is an oracle type that provides data flow from the real world to a decentralized environment. Incoming data are voted on with DAOs and accepted as correct if unchallenged.
The optimistic oracle also known as a “a human-powered truth machine” is making global markets universally fair and reliable.
How Does Uma Work?
In UMA’s optimistic oracle, there are three elements: data requester, data provider and potential objector.
Request: Token holders generate Data requests.
Offer: The contract requests data. The offeror pledges a collateral and the data is transferred to blockchain if accepted as correct. Then he regains hiscollateral and they can challenge the data if they think it is wrong during the objection period.
Objection: There can be someone who does not accept the data provided by the offeror and this person pledges a certain amount of collateral and the UMA team resolves the issue within 48 hours. If the objector is right, part of the collateral pledged is given as a reward, but if they are unjust, they lose all the collateral pledged and this fund is given to the offeror.
What Makes Uma Different?
Its optimistic oracle is more flexible than other oracles because of its human-supported system, and erroneous and repetitive data are voted on the DAO and sorted out in agreement. Thanks to its flexible structure, it renders web3‘s potential limitless.
Uma Token and Its Uses
UMA token is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum and token holders can join in DAOs.
Token holders are eligible to win rewards when they participate in the votes and also they have a say in governance and have the authority to make decisions in protocol upgrades and system changes.
According to Etherscan data, the total supply is 114.8M UMA tokens and the circulating supply is 73,316,736 according to CMC data.
Uma Team
UMA network has a wide team of 137 employees. Leader of the team, Hart Lambur, who after completing his education in Computer Sciences at Colombia University, was on the research team in the same university’s robotics laboratory.
Later, Hart Lambur who interested in trade, started at Goldman Sachs (2005-2013) with interest Rate Trade. He learned about arbitrage, hedge funds and leveraged transactions at Goldman Sachs. He is also continuing his duty as director of Risk Labs.
Ecosystem
There are some projects using Optimistic Oracle technology in the UMA ecosystem: including products like Snapshot, across, polymarket, outcome, rated, shapeshift, Sherlock, cozy.
Snapshot: Serves as a voting platform
Across: Provides bridge and stake service
Polymarket: A platform where you can earn money by voting on subject headings. It serves as the most clearly experienced platform of Optimistic Oracle use.
For example; Will Trump win the election? You vote “yes” or “no” by putting up a certain collateral, and if you’re right, you get the reward.
Activities
UMA has 54 shared on Github and it updates its files frequently. It has an active Twitter account and frequently makes shares with 65.8k followers currently. Also, on Discord, it has a member count of 7634. It recently switched to UMA 2.0 and received updates. In other words they are really active on Social Media.
Where to Buy UMA?
You can buy UMA on the Binance exchange. If you don’t have a Binance account, you can register here with a commission discount.