9 August 2021
Verified worldwide weather conditions and forecasts will soon be available to decentralized financial applications and other blockchain-based apps thanks to an agreement between AccuWeather and blockchain oracle network Chainlink.
The agreement will make it possible for developers to create blockchain-based applications that take weather conditions and forecasts into account.
For example, you might want to buy or sell certain assets based on monsoon activity in India or drought conditions in North America. Without blockchain oracles, the smart contracts that constitute your app would have no access to weather data and would therefore never be triggered. This has been cited by crypto detractors as a weakness of the blockchain architecture.
Oracles solve this problem by managing networks of nodes that validate data from selected feeds like stock exchanges, supply-chain trackers, and weather-condition monitors. Blockchain apps that use the data pay a fee for accessing it. A portion of the fee goes to the data provider.
The agreement between AccuWeather and Chainlink means that blockchain developers will be able to access AccuWeather data via APIs that route requests through the Chainlink oracle network. Weather data will be digitally signed to confirm its validity.
As AccuWeather notes in a news release announcing the agreement, the effects of climate change make it more important than ever to give developers tools that help users hedge against the effects of unforeseen weather conditions. AccuWeather data will help developers create apps that take action based on droughts, sea-level changes, and other events.
The data could even allow NFT developers to create NFTs that dynamically change their appearance based on up-to-the-minute weather conditions.
