Pyth's Next Chapter: Infrastructure Upgrade and a Revenue-Based Economic Model

The Pyth Network is upgrading its infrastructure. Over the past year, the network's center of gravity has shifted from Pythnet, the appchain that has powered Pyth price feeds since 2021, to Pyth Lazer, a new generation of infrastructure built for lower latency, broader asset coverage, and institutional-grade distribution.

This transition was formalized by OP-PIP-100, which passed earlier this week and established the sunset of Pythnet later in 2026. As part of that alignment, the Pyth DAO is now winding down rewards for Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS), the program that served as the network's first experiment in cryptoeconomic security for price feeds. Staking and slashing remain live.

This post covers where the network is heading next, what is changing, and what is staying the same.

Where Pyth Is Going: Lazer, Pyth Pro, and the Data Marketplace

Lazer is Pyth's most advanced oracle infrastructure, built for customizable delivery: configurable feeds, target chains, and update channels ranging from real-time (1ms) to fixed 50ms or 200ms channels. It represents the technical foundation for the next phase of the network, and it is the rail on which both Pyth Pro and the Pyth Data Marketplace run.

Pyth Pro is the institutional product built on top of that foundation. It consolidates more than 3,000 price feeds across equities, futures, ETFs, commodities, FX, crypto, and fixed income into a single distribution network, delivered to traditional financial firms through standard APIs with transparent, tiered subscription pricing.

The Pyth Data Marketplace extends the network's reach in a different direction: onboarding exclusive, high-demand datasets from some of the largest institutions in the world and making them available through Pyth's distribution. Recent additions include Euronext FX, Exchange Data International, Fidelity Investments, OTC Markets Group, SGX FX, Tradeweb, and more.

Together, Pyth Pro and the Data Marketplace are where new integrations are landing, where revenue is being generated, and where the network's focus sits.

What Changes for Oracle Integrity Staking

Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS) launched in late 2024 on Pythnet. It introduced staking rewards and slashing mechanisms designed to hold publishers economically accountable for the quality of their price contributions, bootstrapped by a 100M PYTH allocation from the Pyth Data Association. That reward pool has distributed rewards on schedule and is now approaching depletion, expected by the end of April, 2026.

OP-PIP-103 proposes to set the OIS reward rate parameter (Y) to 0 before the pool reaches zero. This is a technical requirement: if Y remains above zero once the pool is empty, the program continues calculating weekly rewards that no tokens exist to fulfill, creating an accounting mismatch between on-chain state and actual balances.

Continuing to emit new rewards on Pythnet would also be misaligned with OP-PIP-100. The infrastructure OIS was built on is being retired. Rewards should wind down alongside it rather than draw on new allocations for a sunsetting piece of infrastructure.

What changes is reward emissions. Staking and slashing themselves remain live.

What OIS Delivered

Over its run, OIS attracted roughly 1B PYTH in stake across approximately 120 publisher pools. A substantial portion of the Pyth community participated, delegating to publishers of their choice and contributing to the security posture of the oracle.

Across the full lifetime of the program, zero slashing proposals were submitted to the Pyth DAO. Publishers delivered consistent, high-quality data throughout the period covered by OIS. That is the factual record, and it is the cleanest statement available about data quality during this phase of the network.

What Stays the Same

A few points worth being explicit about, because they matter for anyone currently holding a position in OIS or participating in governance:

• Staking and slashing remain live. Enforcement does not require ongoing emissions — it requires stake at risk. Publishers and delegators who keep stake in OIS remain subject to slashing for data quality violations.

• Existing stakers can unstake and withdraw at any time. No lockup changes, no new restrictions. Visit the staking page here.

• Governance staking is a separate program and is unaffected. PYTH holders who stake for governance can continue to do so without any change. Voting on Pyth Improvement Proposals works exactly as it did before.

With Y set to 0, there is no ongoing reward accrual in OIS. For most participants, the straightforward path is to unstake.

What Comes Next: Revenue, Not Emissions

The economic model underneath Pyth has already shifted. For several months now, the PYTH Reserve has been converting protocol revenue into monthly open-market PYTH purchases, executed by the Pyth DAO treasury. To date, approximately 12M PYTH have been purchased through this mechanism.

The Reserve is powered by revenue from Pyth Pro, Pyth Core, Entropy, Express Relay, and the Marketplace. Each month, the DAO deploys a third of its treasury balance to acquire PYTH from the open market.

On the product side, demand is accelerating. Recent and ongoing integrations span prediction markets (Polymarket, Kalshi), Trade[XYZ], multiple centralized exchanges (Coinbase, OKX, BitMEX, Bitget), and a growing cohort of institutions onboarding through the Pyth Data Marketplace. Adoption has been driven largely by inbound interest, an uncommon pattern in the institutional data landscape, and a signal about the product's fit with what the market has been looking for.

The throughline: Pyth's economic design is moving from subsidy-based emissions on a sunsetting network to revenue-based flows on the infrastructure that is now carrying the network forward.

Summary

• Pythnet is being retired per OP-PIP-100, with sunset scheduled for later in 2026.

• OIS rewards are winding down with OP-PIP-103, setting Y to 0 before the reward pool depletes.

• Staking and slashing themselves remain live. What ends is reward emissions.

• ~1B PYTH staked across ~120 publisher pools; zero slashing proposals submitted over the full OIS lifetime.

• The PYTH Reserve has purchased ~12M PYTH from the open market since launch, funded by real product revenue.

• Lazer, Pyth Pro, and the Data Marketplace are the forward infrastructure, with institutional adoption accelerating.