What is Pyth Network and how does the PYTH token work?

Pyth Network is a crypto oracle, a service that brings real-world data such as asset prices onto blockchains so smart contracts can use it. Its main difference from many oracles is where the data comes from: the firms that actually trade the markets publish their own prices directly to Pyth. See what is an oracle for the basics.

What is Pyth Network crypto?

Pyth's early price feeds ran on Solana, and the project published its whitepaper in January 2022. From the start its goal was to get trading firms, market makers and exchanges to share price data they already produce in their own operations. These are called first-party publishers, as opposed to third parties who scrape prices from websites or exchanges.

Pyth combines the prices and confidence ranges sent by many publishers into a single price and a single confidence interval for each asset. The design aims to stop a small group of publishers from moving the result on their own. In April 2026 Pyth said Pyth Pro offers more than 3,000 price feeds.

How does the Pyth Network pull model work?

In a push model, an oracle writes prices on-chain at set intervals. Pyth works the other way: prices update off-chain at high speed, and an app pulls the latest signed update into its own transaction only when needed.

In the current version, a consumer fetches a signed data package and proof from Pyth's Hermes service and submits it to the Pyth contract on its chain. The contract checks the signatures and the proof before accepting the price. After an upgrade that finished on August 26, 2026, five independently operated routers sign updates with a 3 of 5 quorum, replacing the earlier Wormhole guardian set, and Hermes now requires an API key. Pyth is also winding down Pythnet, the dedicated chain that aggregated prices from 2021.

For a look at another major oracle network and how it is organized, see what is Chainlink.

What is the Pyth Network token used for?

PYTH is the network's governance token. Holders stake PYTH to vote on proposals in the Pyth DAO, with one staked token equal to one vote, and voting lasts seven days. PYTH is also used for Oracle Integrity Staking: publishers put up PYTH as collateral, others can delegate to them, and part of that stake can be cut if a publisher supplies inaccurate data.

In April 2026 Pyth described a revenue-based model in which the DAO uses protocol revenue to buy PYTH on the open market each month. It also set Oracle Integrity Staking reward emissions to zero, while keeping staking and slashing in place.

Did the US government publish data through Pyth?

Yes. On August 28, 2025, the US Department of Commerce said it had begun posting real GDP data to several public blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana. The department said the data was further distributed through the oracles Pyth and Chainlink. Decrypt reported that Pyth verifies and distributes the releases, starting with quarterly series and historical data.

As of October 2026, Pyth's on-chain prices still work under the pull model.