Blockchain data is the backbone of every DeFi Market, determining prices, yield and indices. Though the infrastructure to complete these tasks is separated by design, it still works. The key to this unified ecosystem is oracles, which bridge truth into smart contracts block by block.

Oracles play a crucial role in how blockchains learn about the world beyond themselves. Built on the premise of making onchain data fast, fair and affordable, RedStone is a modular oracle framework that helps keep the DeFi ecosystem running.

The Modular Oracle for DeFi

A modular oracle framework involves separating data into distinct components. In the case of RedStone, there are three clear workflow layers: aggregation (gathering data from reputable sources offchain), signing (providers cryptographically signing payloads) and verification (the signed data is verified directly onchain by consumer contracts). 

This modular design means that each layer can evolve independently, and new data sources, formats and verification patterns can be integrated without needing to alter the core security model.

Onchain verification always happens transparently, which means that every signature is publicly verifiable and auditable.

The Compute Ceiling of EVM

The EVM has been the foundation for decentralized computation for years, but it struggles with high-throughput data workloads. This, in turn, means that oracle systems like RedStone must navigate through costly steps.

Even with compression and batching, the EVM creates a compute tax that compounds as the workload grows. It’s worthwhile noting that these are deliberate design choices to ensure determinism and simplicity, but for oracles that handle large, data-heavy updates, they become expensive bottlenecks.

For this reason, RedStone turned to Stylus.

Arbitrum Stylus: A Paradigm Shift

Arbitrum Stylus is a multi-VM architecture that allows WebAssembly (WASM) contracts to run alongside traditional Solidity contracts. This means that blockchain developers are able to write smart contracts in languages including Rust, C, C++ and AssemblyScript while remaining fully interoperable between WASM and EVM.

For RedStone, this meant being able to take their battle-tested Rust SDK and run it natively onchain at lightning-fast speeds. In addition to this, Stylus enabled direct memory access, eliminating costly stack-based data handling, and had efficient data structures that matched hardware-level word sizes. 

“Stylus gives us the best of both worlds: native-speed WASM for compute and seamless interop with Solidity contracts already live on Arbitrum. We can use Rust toolchains, tap Arbitrum precompiles, and still interact with the massive EVM ecosystem. No vendor lock-in, no rewrite tax for our users,” Maja Cholewka, Marketing Lead at Redstone, said.

Cholewka noted that existing consumers can adopt Stylus feeds incrementally. EVM adapters can remain live while reading from the new Stylus module in parallel. No audit was required, and integration could be done in minutes once contract addresses were updated.

A little over one year after implementing Stylus, RedStone continues to reap the benefits:

“Direct byte access and efficient data structures let us process many feeds per transaction without the usual 256-bit limitation. In practice, we can scale to dozens of feeds today and are architected toward handling 1MB-class data windows per block for specialized use cases,” she said.

The team is already supporting numerous analytics-heavy and cross-market protocols that require large structured datasets, far exceeding the capacity of any current EVM-based oracle. 

What’s Next for RedStone?

What RedStone has been able to achieve with Stylus is a preview of what’s to come for blockchain infrastructure. 

Redstone will continue to encourage their customers to adopt their new Stylus oracle. With WASM adoption growing, more protocols will be able to build their products beyond the computational limits of the EVM without having to compromise on composability or network effects.