On-chain “oracle” startup Switchboard Technology Labs Inc., which builds services that provide Web3 projects access to real-world third-party data, today announced it raised $7.5 million in early-stage funding co-led by Tribe Capital and RockawayX.

Additional backing for the company’s Series A funding round included investments from the Solana Foundation, Aptos Labs, Mitzen Labs, Subzero Ventures, Starkware, Arche Capital, Breed VC and Ascensive Assets.

Oracles are software systems that connect blockchains to external systems that allow smart contracts to execute based on inputs from traditional real-world data networks. Some examples include oracles importing data from a financial asset manager for stock prices, weather information for insurance, a randomness generator for gambling, an internet of things sensor network for supply chain, or a government ID network for verification.

“Switchboard is dedicated to delivering the perfect oracle solution for every developer’s needs,” said co-founder Chris Hermida. “The industry has become over-reliant on one-size-fits-all solutions that are needlessly slow and inefficient to set up. We’re granting developers the ability to quickly build the solutions they need.”

The company intends to use the funds to expand its oracle tools and use cases, including its flagship Switchboard On-Demand product, which helps developers aggregate secure information on-chain with low latency and high-fidelity. By executing oracles within confidential runtimes, the oracles themselves cannot observe the data flowing through. Developers can customize the experience and allow them to feed and process data to be used by blockchain applications.

Switchboard also offers access to secure and verifiable randomness via a trustless random number generator for blockchain applications that require a safe way to generate random numbers. Generating random numbers is a potential vulnerability for gambling, gaming, encrypted hashes and more. Users can also store sensitive information, or “secrets,” such as application programming interface keys, passwords and database credentials, securely within oracle feeds using trusted execution environments.

“Oracle networks are the backbone of the Web3 ecosystem,” said RockawayX’s Marek Sandrik. “They differ in the data sources, methods in data publishing, reliability and ease of use. We believe Switchboard scores very highly on these metrics. It is designed to maximize flexibility and performance; developers can run their own queues, customize their oracle network or build on cost-effective on-demand data feeds.”

Since its launch in 2021, Switchboard says that more than 100,000 users have already registered and it has topped more than $2 billion in total value secured on its network.

Image: Shutterstock/Nepool