Pyth Publisher Series: Flow Traders

We are thrilled to announce a new series of conversations with some of our close partners in the publisher community!

Pyth has garnered interest across the crypto world as well as the traditional finance ecosystem. Now with more than 65 data publishers onboarded, we are beyond excited to share some of the stories that have motivated, and continue to inspire, their participation in Pyth.

In this first discussion, we hear from Stephen Kaminsky at Jump Crypto, who asks questions to Michael Lie at Flow Traders, two of our data contributors. Flow Traders is one of Pyth’s data publishers specializing in Exchange Traded Products (ETPs), and it has contributed its digital assets data since the network was still in its infancy last year. Here’s how the conversation went.

Interview

Why did your company join Pyth as a data provider in the first place?

Flow Traders is a long-standing supporter of initiatives that leverage enhanced technology to move market structure forward, and Pyth is doing exactly that. The project will not only improve the accuracy and quality of market data on-chain by aggregating actively contributing institutions but also seek to democratize this data for interesting use cases off-chain.

What about DeFi and the broader oracle landscape is most compelling to you?

Flow Traders Capital makes minority investments in early-stage ventures with an emphasis on the development of platforms, data, and connectivity. We focus on areas where we see a clear strategic fit with Flow Traders, by for example, providing liquidity and being an active user of their platform. Through our strategic investments, we support the development of financial markets infrastructure, and we believe DeFi can improve access to and increase transparency in financial markets. With regards to data specially, we can play an active and supportive role by providing high-quality data, which is key to the correct functioning of decentralized applications, hence our enthusiasm for what the Pyth team is building.

How does Pyth factor into your market data and/or crypto strategy?

We believe that this will help to establish greater efficiency and transparency in the markets, in line with Flow Traders’ longstanding beliefs.

What are your views for the future of DeFi and/or oracle solutions in general? What would you like to see?

The permissionless and trustless nature of blockchain is why this technology can have such a big impact on the financial market. These advantages will allow finance to be accessible to anyone and can make markets more transparent and efficient, which will benefit the end user, both on-chain and off-chain. Oracle solutions will play an important role in this ecosystem, given the need for reliable, fast, and transparent data for these protocols to operate. Given the large number of applications of DeFi, we see oracle solutions to start specializing in specific use cases like speed and transparency.

What are your thoughts on the current state of blockchain technology?

We believe we are in the early stages of blockchain technology, as the underlying infrastructure is still constantly evolving. We note that blockchain as an innovation, has already made an impact on the financial industry, and we are an active user of DeFi applications. What we see now is that the potential use cases are evolving to industries like software development.

How do you see the continuous evolution of CeFi vs DeFi and TradFi vs DeFi?

It likely will take some time before DeFi will be widely adopted, and a regulatory framework will be one of the major accelerators for this to happen. In the meantime, the potential of DeFi will become more apparent as projects continue to innovate. In the end, it is we expect that it’s not a matter of CeFi vs DeFi, but that the financial markets will combine the best of both CeFi and DeFi together.

We can’t wait to hear what you think! You can join the Pyth Discord and Telegram, follow us on Twitter, and be the first to hear about what’s new in the Pyth ecosystem through our newsletter. You can also learn more about Pyth here.