# Oracle

*Crypto & Digital Assets — Finicade finance glossary*

An oracle feeds outside data — usually prices — into smart contracts, which cannot see beyond their own chain. It is DeFi's most load-bearing dependency and its most exploited: manipulating a thin market that an oracle reads has drained hundreds of millions from lending protocols. Robust designs aggregate many sources and use time-weighted averages precisely to make that attack expensive.

**Also known as:** price oracle, Chainlink, oracle problem

**Related terms:** [Smart Contract](https://finicade.com/glossary/smart-contract), [Lending Protocol](https://finicade.com/glossary/lending-protocol), [Liquidation](https://finicade.com/glossary/liquidation), [DeFi](https://finicade.com/glossary/defi), [Model Risk](https://finicade.com/glossary/model-risk)

Source: https://finicade.com/glossary/oracle