What is Chainlink ?
If you're unfamiliar with Chain link, here's what you need to know. Chain Link was founded in 2017 by Steve Ellis and Sergey Nazarov. Chain Link was built by Chain Link Labs, A for-profit software company based in San Francisco but incorporated in the Cayman Islands. Chain Link raised $32 million in a 2017 ico and its main net went live in 2019. Chain Link's purpose is to provide off chain data to cryptocurrency blockchains, namely the price of various coins and tokens. Without this off chain data, most decentralized applications wouldn't work. Chain Link provides off chain data using a series of oracles. Think crypto exchanges like Binance, crypto price websites like Coinmarketcap, and even some crypto venture capitalists. These articles will provide pricing data about various cryptocurrencies and chain link essentially uses the average of their answers as the so called trusted answer for what the price of that coin or token currently is. This ensures that off chain data can't be manipulated and it also preserves the decentralization of decentralized applications since a centralized data feed would present a single source of failure. Oracles are paid in link tokens for the data feeds they provide, and this payment comes from crypto projects, companies and developers who need these data feeds for their operations. In addition to data feeds, chain Link provides other services including verifiable randomness functions or VRF's, which are required for random number generation, or RNG, used in gambling and video games. Chain Link also offers proof of reserves, which makes it possible for crypto companies such as stable coin issuers and crypto custodians to prove to their users that they're holding certain assets of chain. Chain Link recently announced another service called Keepers, which allows developers to automate certain smart contract tasks and functions that involve off chain input or data. It should come as no surprise then that chain link provides off chain data for just about every single crypto project that needs it. Hence why link is the largest Oracle cryptocurrency by market cap.
Chainlink Updates -:
It has been a fair old while since I last covered chain link, and a lot has happened since then. So shortly after my last chain link video hit the tube, the project announced that it had joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, to increase global education about smart contract technology. In February, Kraken announced that it had joined Chain Link as provider of crypto price feeds. Chain Link also introduced its off chain reporting, or OCR protocol, which makes it possible for oracles to securely aggregate their data off chain before submitting it to the blockchain. As reported by Coin Telegraph, the OCR upgrade reduces the cost of chain link data feeds tenfold due to the Ethereum gas fees it saves. In March, Grayscale announced the Grayscale Chain Link Trust, and it has since accumulated around $7 million of link. In April, Grayscale added link to the Grayscale digital Large CAP fund, and it currently accounts for just over 0.5% of the fund's $540 million allocation. Chain Link also partnered with the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, to fund blockchain based startups and initiatives in developing countries. Another thing that happened in April was the release of the Chain Link 2.0 White Paper, which I'll get into later. In June, Chain Link announced a collaboration with the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, or IEEE, to develop international standards for data oracles. In August, Swisscom became the second major telecom giant to start providing chain link data, the first being Deutsche Telecom. Chain Link also integrated with Phantom, Solana and Arbitrium, one of Ethereum's most popular layer two scaling solutions. In September, Iohk announced that Cardano would be using chain link oracles for its off chain data, something which took many people by surprise. This is because Iohk had initially planned to create its own in-house oracles for Cardano, and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson had noted significant friction between linked. Queens and the Cardano community during one of his many AMA's. In October, The Associated Press announced its plans to provide news data on Chain Link, specifically quote economic, sports and race call data. Chain Link also announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to create Chain Link Click Start. This makes it possible for any individuals or institutions looking to provide chain link data to set up an Oracle node, in minutes instead of days. In November, Chain Link became a matching donor for round 12 of etherium's git coin grants, a crowdfunding down that incubates up and coming Ethereum projects. In December, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt became a strategic adviser to Chain Link Labs to help chain Link scale its operations.
Chainlink Price Analysis -:
Now, despite all of Chain Link's announcements, partnerships, updates and developments, link is only up around 50% since the start of 2021. This is much less than just about every other cryptocurrency and even some stocks. So what gives? Well, for starters, Link is a DeFi token. Now, DeFi was hot in 2020 and early 2021, but the hype has worn off over the last half year or so. Case in point, other defy tokens like Uni and AAVE haven't performed very well over the last year either, and their price action is almost identical to lynx. The only difference is that UNI and Ave are still up more than 2X since the start of the year, which means that the primary driver behind links poor price action must be something else that's specific to chain link. Chain link team has been selling millions of link to finance chain links, current operations and future expansion now. Back then links circulating supply was around 400 million. Today links circulating supply is slightly north of 467 million. Now, assuming an average price of around $20 per link, this works out to over $1.3 billion of cell pressure, which is honestly insane. Even though this money likely means more gains for link in the long term, this cell pressure is likely doing lots of damage to link's price in the short term. To be fair though, there are dozens of other high profile crypto projects that have been spending billions of dollars on development, notably Polygon which has made multiple multi million dollar acquisitions over the last few months . These massive expenses were paid for with matic tokens. However, you've probably noticed that the Matic token has performed quite well, even with all this sell pressure. This is because Matic has something that link doesn't have, and that's lots of demand. Links primary use case is to pay for decentralized data feeds which are required for almost every decentralized application to function. In theory this creates lots of demand for link, which should push up its price, but in practice it had next to no effect because link isn't legal tender. As such, any link that's used to pay for data feeds is subsequently sold by node operators, and this selling pressure offsets the buying pressure created by the Dapps, which initially purchased the link. Right now, the only real demand drive at four link is speculative investment, and it looks like a lot of retail investors have taken their money elsewhere. Now, while link is available to institutional investors via Grayscales trust, it looks like there hasn't been much interest in Grayscale Chain Link Trust and links share of the grayscale Large CAP fund has likewise been declining over time. With all that said, though, link is still in a clear uptrend. Unlike many other cryptocurrencies that never fully recovered from the massive crash in May, if this uptrend continues, chain link could reach new all time highs in the coming months, assuming the bull market sticks around. This is of course not guaranteed .
Chainlink Roadmap -:
As with other cryptocurrencies, chainlinks long term success ultimately depends on its future plans. Most of these are detailed in the chain link 2.0 White paper and they all revolve around decentralized Oracle networks, or Dons. Chain Link describes Dons as being analogous to layer two scaling solutions in that they will provide secure off chain computation in addition to off chain data provision for cryptocurrency blockchains. Don's will allow for the creation of hybrid smart contracts, which combine on chain and off chain computation to create new use cases for cryptocurrency. To ensure the security of Don's chain-link will introduce links staking Chain links explicit staking will leverage a super linear staking model inspired by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's quadratic funding and quadratic voting. Here's how that works. Suppose you have 10 chain link Oracle nodes staking $1,000,000 in link. Normally you'd only need slightly more than $10 million to corrupt all ten Oracle nodes. However, chain link staking model means you would need $100 million to corrupt these ten chain link Oracle nodes. This is because each Oracle node must communicate its dishonest decision to other Oracle nodes, and if one of those nodes decides to be honest, they earn the link being staked by the dishonest nodes. In other words, if nine chain link Oracle nodes are corrupted, then the 10th Oracle node will stand to gain $10 millionof link if it reports the dishonest behaviour it's seeing instead of following along. Because chain link has hundreds of Oracle nodes, this staking setup means that chain links Oracle nodes will be next to impossible to corrupt. To my knowledge, only chain link Oracle nodes will be allowed to stake, and the staking rewards have yet to be determined. Another milestone chain Link is hoping to meet in the coming months is the implementation of the cross chain Communication Protocol, or CCIP, which was first announced back in August. As the name suggests, the Ccip will facilitate interoperability between different cryptocurrency blockchains. Chain Link founder Sergey Nazarov hopes that CCIP will become a new open source international communication standard on the Internet, like TCPIP. Interestingly the CCI will feature an anti fraud network which will quote monitor ccip services for malicious activity that could lead to financial loss. If this kind of malicious activity is detected by the nodes which make up the anti fraud network quote, an emergency shutdown is automatically triggered to stop a particular cross chain service. The Chain Link website notes that quote incorrect or excessive funds transfer are two things that the anti fraud network would interpret as malicious. Now these conditions sound eerily similar to the fatf's crypto recommendations .
Chainlink Mission -:
As part of chain links pivot to provide a broader range of crypto related products, the project's mission has evolved to include quote creating an economically fair world. This is noted as Chainlinks explicit goal in a February blog post, where it announced that it will be expanding its community grants program to include so-called social impact projects. In June, Chain Link announced that it would be accelerating its social impact investing and was looking to partner with more nonprofits and NGOs. Now, if social impact investing sounds familiar, that's because it falls under the umbrella of ESG. For those unfamiliar, ESG stands for Environmental-Social-Governance and it's become the investment template for just about every asset manager in the world. This initiative was initially set up by the United Nations in tandem with the world's largest corporations. ESG criteria were standardized by the World Economic Forum shortly afterwards. Given that institutions are keen to invest in and collaborate with companies that commit to ESG, it's safe to assume Chainlink's new mantra is a means of getting on the good side of institutions. This would make sense since Chain Link co-founder Sergey Nazarov has been hyper focused on defi 2.0, which involves the use of non crypto. Assets such as real estate and corporate debt. Obviously these next generation Defi protocols are going to need oracles too, and chain link is likely looking to be the Oracle of choice in this new crypto niche. Now that's going to require a bit of knee bending to get institutions on board, and this is something that almost every major crypto project has had to do in order to secure institutional investments and partnerships. The last point of focus for chain link going forward seems to be the metaverse. In a blog post from November, Chain Link explained that oracles will be required for Metaverse worlds to reach mainstream adoption, especially those built on cryptocurrency blockchains. Not only that, but it's very likely the blockchain metaverse worlds will become interoperable and transferring both fungible and non fungible tokens between blockchains will require elaborate cross chain data protocols such as chain links ccip. In one of the final paragraphs of Chain Link's Metaverse blog post, it also seems to hint that it will be looking to partner with tech giants like Meta and Microsoft to help them with their metaverse endeavors. It looks like this could happen because meta's incoming CTO recently mentioned that they'll be looking to become interoperable with cryptocurrency blockchains. Now you can learn more about the metaverse by reading one of my blogpost about it , and that is of course by clicking here.
Chainlink Concern's -:
So when it comes to the concerns I have about chain link, my primary one has to do with the growth of chain Link's ecosystem. I'll start by saying that chain link has one of the largest ecosystems in cryptocurrency, with over 1000 integrations, partnerships, and collaborations. Chain Link also secures close to $8 billion in cryptocurrency, a 10X increase since the start of 2021. The thing is that chain link has basically. Integrated with every single crypto project that's out there. It's the equivalent of a company that successfully sold its product to every person on the planet. Now, this is admittedly amazing, but it begs the question of how chain Link's ecosystem can continue to grow. One of the answers is to provide new kinds of data feeds that will make it possible to create new kinds of decentralized applications, such as AccuWeather or Forementioned weather data. Chain Link co-founder Sergey Nazarov believes these unique data feeds are a sort of solution to the chicken and egg problem. If there are no new dapps to integrate with, that's because there are no new data feeds. Now that there are new data feeds, there will be more dapps to integrate with. A second solution is to secure more integrations with entities outside of cryptocurrency and this is also something that chain link is doing. The problem there is that institutions are obsessed with compliance and many of them are obsessed with ESG as well. I fear that the CCIP's anti fraud network is just the first of many. Compliance tools that chain link were put in place to appease its institutional partners, and I'm also worried about how much of chain link operations will go off chain to meet the scalability demands of institutions. On that note, chain link could have some data delivery issues if most of its nodes opt to use Amazon Web Services for their operations. Recall that AWS has gone down twice in recent times. As for ESG, it looks like Chain Link has spared no expense funding social impact projects. This is all well and good, but this money is coming from sales of link, which was originally intended for chain links development. Now, you could argue that chain Link's social impact spending is helping expand its ecosystem, but I would argue that this spending is doing more harm than good, since it's creating excess selling pressure, which is hurting links price, and that's creating a lot of tension in the chain link community, to say the least. On the bright side, it looks like chain Link has a big year, ahead chain Link 2.0 is in development and I have a feeling that it won't be long before some of its revolutionary technologies are released. The most important of these is the introduction of chain link staking, which could be the catalyst to take link to new all time highs. This is because it would incentivize Oracle nodes to hold on to their link. Rather than sell, most of these Oracle nodes are run by institutions, and there is nothing that institutions love more than yield. When chain link staking finally comes around, I believe link will rise to meet the expectations of its holders. And when chain Link 2.0 is complete, I predict link will finally realize its full potential. That's all for today , about the leaked crypto bill. If you found it informative, let me know by sharing it to as many people as possible who have myths about the crypto bill. If you plan on sticking around for more interesting blogpost like this please pay a visit to cryptolibrarynow by clicking on the link below -:
As always, thank you for reading this blog post today. I'll be back with more such interesting blogpost as soon as possible .
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