Institutional exchange operator LMAX Group is to provide FX and cryptocurrency trading data to the Solana-based Pyth Network.
LMAX Digital, which has recorded north of $6.6 billion in cryptocurrency trading on a good day, is the first exchange to join Pyth, a decentralized financial market data distribution network built on the super-fast Solana blockchain, backed by the likes of FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried and Chicago-based Jump Trading.
Automated digital contracts that run on blockchains consume financial data via oracle services, arguably in a more democratized manner than in traditional finance. In some respects Pyth overlaps with Chainlink, the ubiquitous data oracle for decentralized finance (DeFi) contracts on the Ethereum network. But the former is optimized for a low-latency world of high-speed and institutional trading.
“If you look ahead, DeFi, which is currently a scientific experiment, means putting balance sheets up on the blockchain and putting assets to work and earning interest on them,” LMAX Group CEO David Mercer told CoinDesk in an interview, adding:
“Once you accept that people will expect to earn interest, and to stake products on a second-by-second, minute-by-minute basis, then the key question is how do you value this stuff?”
LMAX joins market-making giant GTS, which recently began providing data to Pyth; Mercer said a number of other big players are in the pipeline to offer data.
