# What is a price oracle?

A price oracle brings market prices onto a blockchain so that smart contracts can use them, for example to value collateral and decide when a loan gets liquidated.

Also called oracle, enshrined oracle or price feed.

## THORChain’s enshrined oracle

THORChain builds its oracle into the network itself. Every node runs it independently and pulls prices from many centralized exchanges, filters out outliers and weights the rest by 24-hour trading volume. The on-chain price is the median of all the nodes’ prices, and it only counts once at least two thirds of the active nodes have reported. The final prices are broadcast every second.

Apps on THORChain’s app layer, such as Rujira, can use these prices for trading, lending and liquidations.

## What a public wallet gives away

The oracle price is the same for everyone, so a liquidation is triggered by the price, not by who you are. But when a loan sits in a public wallet, anyone can take its collateral, its debt and the oracle price and work out exactly where it gets liquidated, and trade toward that price.

## In Redacted

A loan taken from a Redacted private account follows the same prices and rules as any other, but it has no visible tie to your wallet or to the rest of what you hold.

More: [Borrow privately](https://redacted.gg/private/borrow/)

## Related terms

- [Liquidation](https://redacted.gg/glossary/liquidation.md): A liquidation sells part of a borrower’s collateral to repay their loan when the collateral is no longer worth enough to cover it safely.
- [Loan-to-value (LTV)](https://redacted.gg/glossary/loan-to-value.md): Loan-to-value compares what you owe with what your collateral is worth. Borrowing $50 against $100 of Bitcoin is an LTV of 50%, and the higher it gets, the closer the loan is to liquidation.
- [THORChain](https://redacted.gg/glossary/thorchain.md): THORChain is a network that swaps native coins across chains, such as Bitcoin for Ether, with no bridges and no wrapped tokens. The coins sit in vaults on their home chains, secured by about 100 independent node operators.
- [Rujira](https://redacted.gg/glossary/rujira.md): Rujira is THORChain’s app layer: orderbook trading, swaps, lending, borrowing, staking and more, all with native coins held as THORChain secured assets.

Sources: [Oracles, THORChain developer docs](https://dev.thorchain.org/bifrost/oracle.html)
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Page: https://redacted.gg/glossary/price-oracle/