Pyth Network

Pyth Network is a first-party oracle and market data network. Instead of scraping public APIs, it collects prices straight from the trading firms, exchanges and market makers that set them. It then combines them and delivers them to smart contracts and to off-chain apps. Its homepage lists more than 138 data publishers and over 3,600 live price feeds.

Pyth started on Solana and is still the main price oracle for much of Solana DeFi, especially perps. It now charges for its core oracle data. Since 26 August 2026, apps need a Pyth API key and a paid plan to pull Pyth Core prices. All the money the Pyth DAO earns from its products now goes into buying PYTH.

How the Pyth oracle works

Pyth works by asking the firms that trade an asset to post their own price for it. Big names do this, among them Jane Street, Cboe, Jump Trading, Susquehanna, Binance and Revolut (publisher list). Each price feed blends their quotes into one price plus a confidence interval. The interval shows how far the firms disagree.

A wide interval is a warning sign. A lending or perps app can use it to pause, or to ask for more margin, when the market is messy.

Pyth uses a pull model. Price updates are signed off-chain and served by Pyth's Hermes API. Your app adds the latest signed update to its own transaction, and the Pyth program on-chain checks it before use. That way an app pays to put a price on-chain only when it needs one. Pyth also runs sponsored feeds, which it pushes on-chain on a set schedule for apps that want a price already there.

What changed in 2026: Pythnet retirement and the Pyth Core upgrade

Pyth used to mix its prices on Pythnet, its own chain run by its data firms. It then sent them to other chains, signed by Wormhole W$0.011+22.3% guardians. In April 2026 Pyth said it would retire Pythnet. Lazer, the fast system behind Pyth Pro, took its place.

The switch came with the Pyth Core upgrade. It went live on Solana and Fogo on 26 August 2026, under DAO vote OP-PIP-131. The vote made three changes on Solana:

• The receiver program now reads the new Pyth Core data source instead of Pythnet.
• A fixed set of 5 Pyth signer keys replaced the 19-key Wormhole guardian set that used to check each update.
• The on-chain fee per update dropped from 1 lamport to zero.

Contract addresses stayed the same, so old apps kept working (docs). What changed is access. Every call to Hermes, even for past price data, now needs an API key.

Is Pyth free? Pyth Core pricing and API keys

Pyth is no longer free to pull from its servers. Since 26 August 2026, every call to Hermes needs an API key, and ongoing use needs a paid plan. You sign up at Pyth Terminal, and a free trial is included. Reading a price that is already on-chain stays free and open to anyone.

The Pyth Core upgrade post sets the entry price at $500 a month. That Starter plan covers crypto, NAV, crypto redemption rates and crypto indices, with one-second updates. Apps that need other asset classes subscribe to a Pyth Pro plan, sold in bundles:

In practice the cost lands on whoever fetches updates from Hermes: the protocol or its keeper. An app that never set up a key can no longer pull fresh prices.

Pyth Pro, Pyth Indices and the Data Marketplace

Pyth Pro is Pyth's paid data service for exchanges, brokers, trading firms, banks and AI agents. It launched in September 2025 and can update prices every millisecond. It runs on Lazer. It stayed online when Pythnet went down in May 2026.

Coverage has grown fast. Pyth Pro had about 1,900 stock and fund feeds in its July 2026 report. Asian shares followed, with Korean names such as Samsung and SK Hynix and Hong Kong and Japanese stocks. Bond prices from Fenics, OpenYield and Tradeweb came next. In October, four Korean stocks gained live prices through Korea's post-market session.

Pyth also released version 1.1 of its Pyth Pro MCP Server in mid-October 2026. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard way for AI assistants to use outside tools. The server lets an agent fetch prices, candles, funding rates and market hours from a Pyth Pro plan.

Pyth Indices: 24/7 prices for oil, gold and stocks

Pyth Indices give round-the-clock prices for assets whose home markets close, such as oil, gold and stock baskets. Kraken, Coinbase and Kalshi use them for derivatives and custom baskets. Pyth said 50 indices were live by late September 2026. They include WTI and Brent crude, energy futures indices and the first pre-IPO prices, for Anthropic and OpenAI. In late October Pyth added US Treasury indices that track the government bond yield curve.

Pyth and Nasdaq: the Data Marketplace

The Data Marketplace resells data from other firms. In September 2026 Pyth became an approved external distributor of Nasdaq Basic. Nasdaq Basic is the exchange's live feed of best bids and offers for U.S. stocks. Clients still need written approval from Nasdaq (our coverage). Pyth Terminal is the self-serve front door. There you browse feeds, pick a plan and create an API key.

Pyth Entropy: on-chain random numbers

Entropy is Pyth's random number service for smart contracts. Games, NFT mints and anything else that needs a fair, unpredictable result can use it, and anyone can check the number was not rigged. It runs on EVM chains and is separate from the price feeds. Trail of Bits audited the Entropy contracts and the Fortuna service in January 2024.

Pyth Network revenue, ARR and adoption

Pyth gave its data away for years and now sells subscriptions. It reports annual recurring revenue (ARR), the yearly value of the subscriptions it has today. The latest figures come from Pyth's own October 2026 post. August had been its best month on record to that point.

Real-world-asset perps are contracts that track stocks, oil or gold rather than crypto. Pyth says its data priced more than 94% of the RWA perp volume it tracked in the third quarter of 2026. That share is Pyth's own count. On Solana, Pyth feeds sit under perps, lending and spot venues. Drift Protocol DRIFT$0.013+5.3% builds its markets on them, and Jupiter JUP$0.242-1.1% perps use Pyth as a check and fallback price.

Who Pyth Network is for: builders, data buyers and PYTH holders

Pyth fits protocols that need fast prices beyond crypto, and firms that want licensed market data through one API. Since August 2026 it costs at least $500 a month to pull prices yourself, so it suits funded teams better than hobby projects.

• Perps, options and lending protocols are Pyth's core users. They get sub-second prices, a confidence signal and coverage of stocks, FX, commodities and 24/7 indices. The constraint is cost: $500 a month for crypto-only data, up to $10,000 for every asset class.
• Exchanges, brokers and fintechs can get licensed data, including Nasdaq Basic, without signing direct exchange contracts. That route runs through Pyth Pro and the Marketplace, not the on-chain oracle.
• AI and research teams can let an agent read market data directly, through the Pyth Pro MCP server.
• PYTH holders can stake for a governance vote. Staking rewards are not on offer: Oracle Integrity Staking rewards have been paused since 22 April 2026.
• Small hobby projects are the group the paid model hurts most. An app that only reads prices someone else pushed on-chain avoids the fee, but it then depends on that other party's update schedule.

How to stake PYTH: governance and Oracle Integrity Staking

You stake PYTH on Pyth's staking app to vote on governance and, if you choose, to back price publishers. Voting power grows with the amount staked. Staking runs in 7-day epochs that start on Thursdays at 00:00 UTC, with a warm-up before and a cool-down after.

The same tokens can also go into Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS). Here you delegate to a publisher's pool, and that stake can be slashed if the publisher's data is bad. OIS rewards were set to zero on 22 April 2026, and none are being paid to any pool, per Pyth's OIS docs. Slashing still applies.

Staking PYTH in late 2026 therefore buys a vote and a share of slashing risk, with no yield. You can unstake at any time, but your tokens only free up after the cool-down at the end of the epoch.

Is Pyth Network safe? Risks and audits

Pyth is a mature oracle with many audits, but it has failed before. It now also asks you to trust fewer parties. On Solana, each price check now rests on 5 keys held by Pyth, not on Wormhole's larger guardian group. No public audit on Pyth's list covers that change. And when Pyth goes down, much of Solana DeFi feels it at once.

Pyth audits and what each one covers

Pyth's security page lists audits by Zellic, OtterSec, CertiK, Trail of Bits and Nethermind. The ones that matter on Solana are:

• CertiK, December 2022: the Solana receiver contracts.
• Trail of Bits, July 2023: the Pythnet oracle and validator.
• OtterSec, April 2024: the Solana pull-oracle contracts.
• Zellic, January 2025: the Pyth Lazer Solana contract.

None of these covers the August 2026 receiver upgrade or the 5-key signer set. Pyth's bug bounty on Immunefi pays up to $250,000.

Who can upgrade Pyth's Solana programs

The Pythian Council can upgrade the Solana receiver program (OP-PIP-4). The council signs through a Squads multisig and acts on DAO votes. It carried out the August 2026 upgrade. A multisig is safer than one key. Even so, it can still change code that every app using Pyth relies on. This comes from Pyth's governance posts. The live upgrade key was not checked on-chain for this profile.

Pyth outages and bad prices

On 22 May 2026, Pythnet stopped making blocks. Core and sponsored feeds went dark on Solana and nine other chains. Pyth closed the incident about six hours after it opened (status page). Pyth Pro and Lazer stayed up the whole time.

In September 2021, Pyth's bitcoin price briefly showed about $5,400, which set off liquidations on Solana apps (CryptoSlate). The confidence interval on that print was far wider than the price itself. That is why apps are told to check it.

Oracle concentration on Solana

When Switchboard SWTCH$0.00002759-7.8% shut down in September 2026, it told its users to move to Pyth or RedStone (our coverage). So even more of Solana leans on Pyth for prices. The paid model adds one more way to fail: if an app's API key lapses, it cannot pull fresh prices.

Pyth vs Chainlink and other oracle alternatives

Pick Pyth for Solana trading apps and for stock, FX and commodity prices with a confidence interval. Pick Chainlink if your app lives mostly on Ethereum-style chains and wants more than prices. Pyth gets its prices straight from the firms that trade. Chainlink pays outside node operators to gather data from many sources.

Chainlink offers push feeds, a pull product called Data Streams, and extra tools such as cross-chain messages and automation. Pyth leads on fast trading data and on assets beyond crypto. It has been strongest on Solana and in perps.

RedStone Finance is the other oracle Switchboard named for its users to move to. It is the obvious second source for an app that does not want to rely on one oracle. Switchboard itself is no longer an option on Solana.

What is the PYTH token used for? Tokenomics, buybacks and team

PYTH is a governance token. Holders stake it to vote on Pyth Improvement Proposals covering fees, feed listings, publisher permissions and contract upgrades. Data plans are priced in dollars, not PYTH. Instead, all money the Pyth DAO gets from its products now goes to buying PYTH on the open market.

Pyth calls this "the 100% Rule". The DAO approved it as proposal OP-PIP-136 in October 2026. It replaced monthly votes that each spent about a third of the treasury's non-PYTH balance on PYTH. The rule covers income from Pyth Pro, Listing as a Service, the Data Marketplace and Pyth Indices.

The bought tokens sit in the PYTH Reserve. Pyth says it held 42 million PYTH at the end of September.

PYTH is an SPL token on Solana (see the PYTH token page). Its maximum supply is fixed at 10 billion, and 15% of it was unlocked at launch. Its tokenomics split the supply as follows:

PYTH launched in November 2023. The locked tokens free up in four steps, and the last is due around May 2027.

Douro Labs is the main core contributor, and Mike Cahill is its CEO. The Pyth Data Association publishes the whitepaper.