How Strong Will Pyth Network (PYTH) be in 2025?

Let's jump straight in, Chainlink (LINK) has ruled blockchain oracles for some time now. But Pyth Network or Pyth is making a bold move for the crown.

Chainlink (LINK) has dominated the blockchain oracle scene for some time now, but Pyth Network (PYTH) is making a bold move for the crown. With millisecond-level latency and a focus on derivatives through its Pyth Lazer offering, Pyth is redefining DeFi’s algorithmic trading game. While Chainlink leans on institutional trust, Pyth’s speed and precision are winning over a new generation of traders. Can Chainlink keep up? Today we look into how strong Pyth Network (PYTH) will be in 2025.

In 2024, Chainlink handled a staggering $18.2+ trillion in Total Transaction Enabled (TTE), while Pyth surpassed the $1 trillion mark in Total Transaction Volume (TTV). While the former measures the quantity of transactions processed, the latter only concerns the total monetary value of those transactions. Whatever the case, these numbers point to Chainlink’s dominant role in the oracle market, with Pyth making impressive strides of its own.

DeFi 2.0 refers to “a subset of emerging protocols building on top of initial DeFi money LEGOs to advance the current DeFi landscape, primarily in the form of liquidity provisioning and incentivization.” DeFi 2.0 doesn’t have time for yesterday’s tech. This is why Pyth is racing ahead, catering to traders who need data faster. For Chainlink, some might say the ground is shifting beneath its feet. The real question isn’t who wins — it’s how many seconds Pyth needs to make “decentralized oracle” mean something.

Speed Matters — Especially When Money’s on the LineChainlink’s defenders will tout its $35.527 billion in Total Value Secured (TVS) (DefiLlama) as impressive. No doubt. But the truth is, it’s becoming a relic of DeFi 1.0. Today’s market cares less about static metrics and more about real-world utility.

Take Drift Protocol, for example. Its traders prioritize Pyth’s 400-millisecond price updates, powering efficient trades and over $100 million in daily volume — as of February 2024. This year, speed and reliability matter more to derivatives traders than TVS in a DeFi space that rewards performance over old benchmarks.

In March 2024, Bitcoin experienced major volatility, leading to a rapid price decline. During this period, Pyth’s price feeds updated approximately 3.33 times per second, providing timely data to protocols utilizing their services. In contrast, Chainlink’s feeds, operating on a push model with updates occurring either every hour or upon a 0.5% price deviation — a vulnerability pointed out in Altcoin Daily’s 42k-view analysis — may not have provided data as promptly during the rapid market movements.

This discrepancy exposes a potential misalignment between Chainlink’s current push model and the demands of high-frequency trading. Recent advancements, such as Chainlink’s Data Streams, have since addressed these issues, offering pull-based, low-latency, high-frequency data updates.

When it comes to Oracle models, TTV vs. TVS, Pyth and Chainlink are playing very different games. Pyth’s TTV approach, monetizing per oracle call, has fueled its growth, with over $800 billion in on-chain traded volume. Meanwhile, Chainlink’s TVS model secured $35.681 billion in assets, offering steady fees but raising questions about scalability. As both networks expand, Pyth’s rapid adoption — growing its secured value 46-fold in just nine months during 2024 — signals it may soon pose a serious challenge to Chainlink’s dominance.

So, why is TTV > TVS?

TVS shows what’s locked, but TTV shows what’s happening—how often, how fast, and how efficiently DeFi moves.

Who Will Survive the Regulatory Squeeze?Chainlink is thriving under the 2025 regulatory spotlight. With its Privacy Suite it aligns neatly with MiCA rules. Add to this the strong partnership with SWIFT and things are continuously looking up. On the flip side, Pyth’s heavy reliance on DeFi platforms linked to perpetual trading could spell trouble. With the CFTC cracking down on such sectors, Pyth’s growth hangs in the balance, vulnerable to sudden regulatory shifts.

Chainlink’s 2024–2025 milestones include collaborations with DTCC, Euroclear, and Swift, as well as Chainlink’s Runtime Environment launch to streamline multi-chain development. Sergey Nazarov predicts 2025 as the year of capital markets adoption, with governments and central banks adopting blockchain standards.

Chainlink isn’t out of regulatory hot water just yet. If the SEC slaps LINK with a “security