CoinQuora Exclusive Interview — Vinod Khurana, Co-Founder of Plugin

Q. Kindly Introduce Yourself and What You Do?

I am currently based in Dubai; have over 4 decades of a successful career in Banking, Insurance & Information Technology in the International financial market. I gained significant expertise in the development of strategy, execution, and positioning business for growth. I am a passionate entrepreneur; a fundraiser for organizations seeking to meet their short and long-term financial goals. I am highly experienced, techno-savvy, and result-oriented with the ability to build, manage & turn around diversified businesses and have extensive exposure to risk management, business strategy, and crises management.

Q. Can You Highlight Some of the Ideas Behind Plugin? Why Did Plugin Come To Be?

Long back, in 1993, I was Manager, Zonal Computer Centre in State Bank of India in Chandigarh, overseeing mechanization and computerization of over 200 branches in Punjab, a state in India. During that period and thereafter during various postings in State Bank of India, particularly between 2005 to 2008, when I was posted at Global IT Centre of the Bank and all the branches running to more than 10,000 were being computerized, I found that if the network is centralized and if it faces any IT related issue, the entire network of the bank will be affected. I used to travel to various countries and meet various stakeholders in the IT and Financial sectors. As a concerned netizen, the things that trouble me the most are issues relating to security, reliability & various vulnerabilities for various users and data feed providers, who use centralized Oracle (NYSE:) networks for their smart contracts because, in the future, DeFi is going to be the backbone of many financial services and DeFi empowered/Depends on the Decentralized Data Oracle Feed.

Centralized Oracles Computing acts as a single entity, which provides critical data from an external source to a smart contract, operating with a set of security features. Due to its architecture, such oracles are controlled by a single source which predominantly works as the sole source of information for smart contracts. Since it works similarly to the traditional financial system where a single entity is responsible for everything, it suffers major limitations, or we can say it has a single point of failure. These oracles have a simple architecture with lesser investment in terms of infrastructure and maintenance. Although they provide protection against game theory attacks, these are still prone to vulnerabilities to being corrupted and attacked.

In addition, the Blockchain Oracle Problems result from the inability of oracles to verify the integrity of their data. Additionally, the likelihood of malfunction and deliberate tampering varies by type. On the other hand, if the information is trusted and verified, the oracle may fail to function properly on the smart…