Vulnerability Analysis of Web 3.0 based Decentralised Oracle Networks

The Web 3.0 digital economy is an emerging critical infrastructure that relies on oracle networks to provide trusted off-chain data to on-chain smart contracts, enabling decentralized value exchange. However, these networks are critical points of failure. If compromised, they can destabilize smart contracts, cause substantial financial losses, and undermine trust in decentralized systems. This paper presents early findings on previously underreported vulnerabilities in Solana-based oracle networks like Pyth and Switchboard. We identify three overlooked attack vectors: (1) bit-flip attacks, where minor data corruptions bypass sanity checks; (2) market-price access attacks, which exploit timing gaps in data reads; and (3) price aggregation attacks, where adversaries manipulate aggregated prices using the oracle’s own logic. Existing detection approaches fall short due to limited precision, inadequate modeling of contract-oracle interactions, and poor visibility into aggregation processes. To address these gaps, we implement lightweight real-time infrastructure and delta-decision procedures to effectively detect and analyze these emerging threats.