Reference prices for Bitcoin markets

Bitcoin already holds most of the pieces a financial contract needs: an asset anyone can verify, ownership that can be proven, and transactions that can lock collateral under agreed conditions.

One piece that has been missing is a reliable mechanism for oracle attestation, a signed statement of the price that tells a loan when to liquidate and an option what it owes at expiry. Bitcoin can verify a signature on a transaction but not a signed statement about the world outside it. Builders have historically worked around the gap in less direct ways: pre-signing a transaction for every possible outcome, letting lenders watch the price offchain and co-sign liquidations from a multisig escrow, or moving bitcoin to chains where oracles are native.

Each approach works, but each limits what a product can express or who gets a say over the collateral. With Arkade, DIA's attestations become signatures a Bitcoin contract can check directly today, with no bridge or relay in between, and the collateral never leaves Bitcoin.

DIA builds each BTC/USD attestation from first-party trade data pulled directly from more than 100 exchanges, then filters and aggregates it on Lasernet, its oracle rollup, under a methodology anyone can inspect. The contract checks that an attestation comes from DIA, and DIA's published sources and methodology let anyone check how the price was calculated. Contracts can pair DIA with other signers and settle on the median, so no single quote can move a payout on its own.

Settled on clear terms

Oracle prices have been part of onchain infrastructure for years, underpinning lending markets and derivatives on other networks. Support for price oracle attestations brings that foundation to Bitcoin, so loans, options and protection products can settle at a level every participant can check. Ark Labs is exploring these designs in the open, starting with options, as groundwork for the income, protection and lending products it builds with partners.

"Bitcoin has long lacked the ability to check something as simple as a signed price, severely limiting its potential for financial products like loans, options and vaults. With Arkade, contracts can verify DIA's signed price when they settle, allowing richer programmable infrastructure with stronger settlement guarantees for participants."

Marco Argentieri, CEO, Ark Labs

Talk to the team

Ark Labs works with businesses launching income, protection and lending products for their clients, and with market makers pricing liquidity in Bitcoin markets. Talk to the team about what you want to build.

About DIA

DIA provides trustless oracles that deliver verifiable data feeds to onchain applications, auditable from source to chain. It sources market data directly from more than 100 exchanges, covers more than 20,000 assets across tokens, stocks, commodities and FX rates, and powers more than 250 applications on over 65 blockchains, including live lending markets and vaults on Morpho, Euler and Silo across Ethereum and Base.