At the beginning of the year, if someone asked me what the most boring thing in the Bitcoin ecosystem is, I would have said without hesitation: oracles. They are like cameras on a highway—necessary but dull. I didn't expect to be proven wrong by the end of the year, and only then did I realize that the clown was actually myself.

Thinking carefully, the Bitcoin ecosystem is more like a deep-sea submarine. Oracles are not just deck decorations; they are the oxygen system inside the cabin. Who needs them when splashing around in shallow waters? But once you dive into the 10,000-meter trenches of BTCFi, not having them could really cause problems.

We were all too confident at first. Used to the mature oracle system of Ethereum, we naturally thought these new projects were just upgraded versions of "price reporting." This stereotype caused us to overlook the most critical point: Bitcoin and Ethereum operate with completely different logic.

Now, with numerous Bitcoin Layer2 solutions emerging, liquidity is fragmented like shattered glass. At this moment, a "eye" that can locate all fragments in real-time has become essential.

What truly changed my perspective is the transformation of these projects' roles—from "weather forecasters" to "neural hubs." They do more than just tell you Bitcoin prices; through an innovative asset proof mechanism, they can verify the real-time location and validity of cross-chain assets.

During the liquidation wave in Q3 last year, the participating projects showed huge differences. Some protocols still using traditional oracles suffered heavy losses due to delayed quotes, while those adopting new schemes relied on millisecond response speeds to almost completely escape unscathed. The market thus realized: reliability has real value.

Their economic model design also reflects deep thinking. Instead of blindly airdropping tokens, they tightly link node reputation, data quality, and market performance, truly establishing an incentive-compatible ecological closed loop.