A new Cardano-based project is handling oracles a lot differently than Chainlink

Cardano (ADA) is getting into data oracles ahead of the Goguen era that will add smart contract functionality, taking a different approach than Chainlink. The first oracles are being built in partnership with EMURGO, one of the companies in the Cardano ecosystem, and Ergo (ERG). The first two oracles are deployed on Ergo and provide price feeds for the two trading pairs: ADA/USD and ERG/USD.

The new model introduces Oracle Pools, which are capable of incentivizing good and disincentivizing bad behavior. Ergo's core developer Alexander Chepurnoy told Cointelegraph that the idea involves major players in the DeFi ecosystem donating funds to the oracle pools that they find useful. Then, the data providers get compensated with the funds from the pool. 

The model also envisions data providers staking funds as collateral. If a data provider feeds low-quality data, his stake can get "slashed". Unlike Chainlink, which introduced a LINK token as gas-like payment mechanism, the new model is cryptocurrency agnostic.

Rumors started peculating when Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson tweeted about talking to Chainalink's co-founder Sergey Nazarov. Some were expecting an announcement to be made soon about Cardano integrating Chainlink's oracles. However, thus far, these rumors have not materialized. Likely, Cardano is in no hurry as there is little use in oracles before the Goguen era. At the same, it allows it time to test oracle infrastructure developed in-house.