What is a decentralised oracle network (DON)?

A decentralised oracle network (DON) is a group of independent third-party services that actively seek out real-world data such as weather updates or financial information and feeds it back to the blockchain, providing a bridge between the decentralised and centralised worlds.

Once gathered, the data is then evaluated and sent to the smart contract (an independent contract designed to fulfill a certain purpose) that requested it, and can be used to help form a hybrid smart contract that combines its own code with real-world data to create far more advanced and capable dapps that can interact with traditional systems like banks and corporations outside the blockchain.