# How to be a Helium price oracle

By [Jamie Dubs](https://paragraph.com/@jamiedubs) · 2021-11-22

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**The Helium Network Wants YOU To Submit HNT Prices Regularly** **(It's Easier Than You Think)**

Background
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The first rule of being an oracle is that you don't talk about being an oracle.

The second rule of being an oracle is to submit HNT prices early and often. Daily at a minimum; hourly would be great. Prices are reset every 30 blocks (30 minutes), and a majority of oracles must vote within a rolling 24 hour period for a price to be set. Otherwise we end up with stale pricing data and flat spots, like this nonsense:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/b9e1115c074d27ad096156e4433ac50644128b528c845a7b98708eea3b053196.png)

Here's what it looks like when the number of voting oracles falls below a majority, represented by the the dashed threshold line (data & graph from [DeWi ETL](https://etl.dewi.org/public/dashboard/377b53e9-d4ed-48f0-9352-9285ad56461e))

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/afeb515eb2e69a12c059d577c0d34b4f0898a4b7170c643de86eafa1c24f32ab.png)

Read more about oracles [on docs.helium.com](https://docs.helium.com/blockchain/oracles/) and then check out all the sick charts of oracles (allegedly) submitting prices on the [DeWi ETL Oracles dashboard](https://etl.dewi.org/public/dashboard/377b53e9-d4ed-48f0-9352-9285ad56461e)

Setup
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You'll need to be comfortable with the commandline, and ideally have a dedicated server you can setup to automatically submit prices on a regular basis. _Update:_ don't use a Raspberry Pi, helium-wallet-rs doesn't build on ARM.

1.  Download and install the commandline [helium-wallet](https://github.com/helium/helium-wallet-rs)
    
2.  Create a fresh mainnet wallet
    

    helium-wallet create basic
    Password: [unique long top secret password]
    Confirm: [unique long top secret password]
    

1.  Backup that new `wallet.key` keyfile somewhere super duper safe
    
2.  Send the wallet address to your top secret handler. I don't know who this is, don't ask.
    

Submit prices
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Helium has made this very easy. Thank you Louis. You don't even need to look up the HNT price – you can use `helium-wallet` to automatically fetch and submit the latest price from Coingecko, Bilaxy or Binance:

    helium-wallet oracle report --block auto --price coingecko --commit
    

This assumes the `wallet.key` is in the same directory. Use `-f ~/path/to/oracle-wallet.key` otherwise.

Lastly, setup a script to automatically submit prices on a regular basis. You can use the `HELIUM_WALLET_PASSWORD` environment variable to automatically enter your wallet password; keep this safe.

Here is a basic shell script:

    #!/bin/bash
    export HELIUM_WALLET_PASSWORD="[unique long top secret password]"
    keyfile="$HOME/path/to/oracle-wallet.key"
    source="coingecko" # bilaxy, binance
    
    # Try three times before giving up
    # Sometimes Coingecko is tired
    n=0
    until [ "$n" -ge 2 ]; do
      echo "attempt $n ..."
      $HOME/bin/helium-wallet -f "$keyfile" oracle report --block auto --price "$source" --commit 2>&1 && break
      n=$((n+1))
      sleep 5
    done
    

Then throw it in your crontab (`crontab -e`):

    # Submit HNT prices hourly
    @hourly   /home/pi/bin/helium-oracle-submit | grep -v "timed out" >/dev/null
    

You did it
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Please contact me (email and Discord username are on [jamiedubs.com](https://jamiedubs.com)) and we’ll see about getting you added to the official list. And remember, if you stop submitting prices, you bring great shame on your family!

Thank you for your service

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*Originally published on [Jamie Dubs](https://paragraph.com/@jamiedubs/how-to-be-a-helium-price-oracle)*