What is Pyth Network?
Pyth Network is an oracle protocol built around a simple idea: get the price data straight from the firms that already trade the asset. Jump Trading helped seed it in 2021 alongside a long list of traditional finance and crypto market makers, and the mainnet went live on Solana late that year. Instead of paying middlemen to scrape APIs, Pyth pulls quotes directly from publishers like Jane Street, Cboe, Wintermute, GTS, Susquehanna, Binance, and OKX.
The PYTH token launched on November 20, 2023 via airdrop, with a total supply of 10 billion and a multi-year unlock schedule. Most aggregation happens on Pythnet, a dedicated Solana fork, before the prices fan out to over 70 chains through Wormhole. Major customers today include Synthetix, GMX, Drift, Marginfi, dYdX, Aevo, and several hundred smaller dApps. Many of those started on Solana and migrated the same feeds to EVM chains as Pyth expanded.
PYTH price today
PYTH trades against USDT and USD on every major venue, with the deepest liquidity on Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Bybit, and Kraken. The price card on this page is volume-weighted across the busiest order books and refreshes every 60 seconds. Reference pairs are PYTH/USDT, PYTH/USD, and PYTH/SOL.
What actually moves the PYTH price:
- Cross-chain feed adoption. New integrations on EVM L2s, Sui, Aptos, and other targets translate into more pull-update fees and stronger demand for the token.
- Oracle Integrity Staking participation. The share of supply locked in OIS is a clean tell on holder conviction. Big drops in staked supply usually precede sell pressure.
- Express Relay rollouts. Each major dApp that wires up Express Relay for liquidations or auctions adds a recurring fee stream that flows back through the network.
- Pyth Lazer milestones. Faster feed launches on perps DEXs and HFT venues are the headline catalyst that competing oracles cannot easily match.
- BTC correlation. PYTH still behaves like a high-beta altcoin. Sharp moves in BTC and SOL drag it more than any single catalyst.
- Token unlocks. PYTH followed a multi-year unlock schedule with material cliffs in May 2024 and beyond. Those events shape the supply backdrop for months at a time.
The numbers in the price card above are live. For multi-year scenarios, see our Pyth price forecast.
First-party oracles: what makes Pyth different
Most oracle networks pay independent node operators to scrape exchange APIs, average the results, and publish them on-chain. That is the third-party model. Pyth flipped the design. The firms that already make the price (exchanges, market makers, prop trading shops) publish their own quotes directly to the network. There is no middleman copying numbers from a website.
What changes when the source is first-party:
- Latency. Publishers stream quotes continuously from the same engines they use for their own books. Pyth aggregates them on Pythnet and pushes updates roughly every 400 milliseconds.
- Coverage depth. Equities, FX, commodities, and ETFs come from firms that already trade those instruments under regulatory licenses. Most of those feeds are hard for a third-party oracle to source.
- Accountability. Each publisher signs the data they submit. If a feed misbehaves, the slashing logic in OIS knows whose stake to cut.
- Cost. Publishers contribute data as part of the protocol design rather than billing per call, so consumers pay aggregation and pull fees rather than full data-vendor rates.
The trade-off is that Pyth depends on the quality and honesty of a curated publisher set. The publishers compete for OIS rewards, and the protocol can rotate or slash bad actors, but the model is closer to a permissioned data consortium than to an open marketplace.
How Pyth’s pull oracle works
Chainlink popularized the push model: nodes write a fresh price on-chain at fixed intervals or when a deviation threshold breaks. That works, but it pays gas constantly even when no one is reading the feed. Pyth uses a pull model. Prices are produced and signed off-chain on Pythnet, and consumers pull the latest signed update on-chain only when they actually need it.
The flow looks like this:
- Publishers stream signed price updates into Pythnet, the dedicated Solana fork that hosts aggregation logic.
- Pythnet runs the aggregation algorithm and produces a confidence interval for each feed (median plus a spread that reflects publisher disagreement).
- The aggregated price is broadcast to every supported chain via Wormhole as a Verified Action Approval.
- When a smart contract needs the price, it includes a signed Pyth update in its own transaction and pays a small pull fee. The contract reads the price atomically, in the same transaction that consumes it.
- Off-chain keepers can also pre-update high-traffic feeds so the freshest price is sitting on-chain when the next user transaction arrives.
For the consumer, the practical effect is cheaper, fresher data. Lending protocols and perps DEXs use the confidence interval to widen liquidation buffers when the market is jumpy, which reduces wrongful liquidations during fast moves.
PYTH staking and Oracle Integrity Staking
Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS) launched in October 2024. The point is to put real economic skin in the game on every publisher. Holders stake PYTH on the publisher they trust, the publisher gets a slashing buffer that backs its data, and rewards flow through both sides as long as the data stays accurate.
How it works in practice:
- Pick a publisher. Stakers delegate PYTH to a specific publisher, similar to picking a validator on a proof-of-stake chain.
- Earn rewards. Yields are paid in PYTH and have generally landed in a low double-digit percentage range, depending on the publisher and total staked supply. Treat any quoted APR as a moving target.
- Take slashing risk. If the publisher submits inaccurate data and the on-chain governance process confirms a violation, both the publisher’s stake and the delegated stake can be slashed.
- Unbonding. PYTH is locked while staked and follows an epoch-based withdrawal flow. Plan for several days, not minutes.
OIS is closer in spirit to insurance underwriting than to a savings account. The yield is compensation for taking publisher-quality risk, not a free token printer. Stakers who do not actively follow publisher performance probably should not be staking with size.
Pyth vs Chainlink
Pyth and Chainlink are the two oracle networks that matter at scale. They sit on opposite sides of the design space, and the right answer depends on what a protocol is actually trying to do.
- Data sourcing. Pyth is first-party, with publishers like Jane Street, Cboe, and Binance pushing quotes directly. Chainlink is third-party, with independent node operators aggregating prices from exchange APIs.
- Update model. Pyth is pull-based and updates roughly every 400 ms on Pythnet. Chainlink is push-based with deviation triggers. For HFT and perps DEXs, Pyth is faster. For low-frequency lending markets, Chainlink is more battle-tested.
- Chain footprint. Pyth dominates Solana and ships to 70+ chains through Wormhole. Chainlink leads on Ethereum and most EVM L2s and has a wider product surface (CCIP, VRF, Proof of Reserve, Automation, Functions).
- Track record. Chainlink has secured DeFi collateral for years and has the longer audit and uptime history. Pyth is newer in production but has a stronger run on Solana-native and Cosmos-native venues.
- Token economics. Both pay node-side rewards, but the staking design differs. PYTH staking via OIS routes risk to publishers. Chainlink staking v0.2 routes risk to a community pool plus operators.
For Ethereum lending markets that already trust Chainlink Price Feeds, switching is rarely worth the integration cost. For Solana perps, equities, and FX feeds, Pyth is usually the better fit. Several teams now use both, with one as primary and the other as a sanity check.
How to buy Pyth (PYTH)
PYTH is widely listed, so the harder choice is what network to withdraw to and how to keep the tokens safe afterward. The path most buyers follow:
- Pick an exchange. Binance, OKX, Coinbase, Bybit, and Kraken all list PYTH against USDT or USD with deep books. Compare maker-taker fees, supported withdrawal networks (Solana is cheapest), and audit history. Our exchange ratings compare the leading options.
- Clear KYC. Most regulated venues need a government ID and a selfie check. Verification usually completes within 10 minutes.
- Fund the account. Stablecoin deposits (USDC or USDT on Solana) are the cheapest way in. Bank transfers (ACH, SEPA) take a couple of business days. Card buys are instant but expensive on the spread.
- Buy at the price you want. A market order fills now at whatever ask is on top of the book. A limit order locks in a maximum price, which matters more on PYTH than on majors because the asset can move 10 to 20% on a single feed integration headline.
- Withdraw to your own wallet. PYTH lives natively on Solana and bridges to other chains. For long-term holdings, send the tokens to a hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor) and consider locking part of the balance into OIS if you understand the slashing risk.
Send a small test transaction first. A $1 test withdraw is cheap insurance against a wrong network selection or a typo in the destination address.
Risks of holding Pyth Network
PYTH is an infrastructure bet on first-party oracles winning a meaningful slice of a market that Chainlink has dominated for years. Three risks dominate everything else.
- Competition with Chainlink. Most existing Ethereum DeFi runs on Chainlink Price Feeds. Pyth has to win on speed, cost, or coverage in every new integration. Any slowdown in EVM expansion shows up directly in pull-fee revenue.
- Token unlock pressure. The PYTH supply schedule is back-loaded with multi-year cliffs. Each major unlock to publishers, the team, and ecosystem partners adds float that the spot market has to absorb. Past cliffs have correlated with sharp drawdowns.
- Publisher quality dependency. The first-party model is only as strong as the publishers behind it. If a major firm exits, gets compromised, or feeds bad data and slashing fails to deter the next attempt, downstream protocols carry the loss.
- Drawdown. PYTH peaked near $1.20 in March 2024 and has since traced typical altcoin volatility. Position sizing should assume future cycles can deliver 70 to 90% drawdowns from local highs.
- Wormhole dependency. Cross-chain delivery uses Wormhole. A serious incident on the bridge would freeze most non-Solana feeds, even if Pythnet itself is healthy.
- Custody. Tokens left on an exchange depend on the exchange’s solvency. Long-term holdings belong on a hardware wallet under your own keys.
This page is information, not financial advice. Talk to a licensed advisor before allocating real capital.
Pyth Network's all-time high of $1.20 was set on March 16, 2024. The current price sits +96.17% below that peak. Distance from the all-time high is a common reference point when evaluating long recoveries and macro support or resistance.
Buying Pyth Network (PYTH) is a five-step routine once you have picked the right venue and pair. The steps below mirror what most investors do today.
Whether Pyth Network is a good investment depends on your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for volatility. Like all cryptocurrencies, PYTH carries real market risk: prices can rise or fall sharply in a day, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns.
This page provides data and analysis for educational purposes only. It is not financial advice. Always do your own research, diversify, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
