Tezos chooses Chainlink oracles to power its smart contracts

Developers building on Tezos will now use Chainlink oracles to service their smart contracts, the blockchain platform announced today. 

Chainlink, whose coin is one of the best performing cryptocurrencies in the last two years, helps connect blockchains to real-world data. It brings off-chain (not on a blockchain) data to smart contacts (which are on a blockchain) through a decentralized system of oracles.

Oracles allow developers to build smart contracts that incorporate off-chain data, access external API services, and trigger settlements, and the oracle provider has seen a slew of integrations throughout the past 18 months. It’s used in everything from pricing feeds for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platforms to aviation insurance, sports memorabilia and now maybe even a stablecoin.

The Tezos ecosystem

Tezos, a top-ten ranking cryptocurrency by market cap, will use Chainlink to access key off-chain resources to use in on-chain applications, according to a statement. Integrating the oracle provider will enhance its “advanced ecosystem for developing next generation decentralized applications,” it stated. 

“Tezos is one of the most advanced blockchains in the space, offering many unique features that make it appealing to institutions and developers,” said Chainlink’s co-founder, Sergey Nazarov.

“We’re excited to help the Tezos ecosystem take that critical step forward in its evolution by securely integrating with the whole spectrum of valuable real-world resources existing off-chain,” he added. 

Two teams of Tezos developers will lead the integration: Smart Chain Arena, the team behind Tezos smart contracts programming language SmartPy; and Cryptonomic, which develops Tezos tools like Galleon wallet, and Nautilus Cloud.

As well as building finance applications, NYC-based Cryptonomic advises enterprise players on their blockchain strategies and builds. Meanwhile, SmartPy is a language unique to Tezos. It’s a Python library which means contracts can freely inherit other contracts—useful when dealing with multi-stage computations like oracles.

Tezos is expanding the financial services it offers 

The Chainlink network has 30 independent node operators, many of which also have extensive experience as Tezos bakers—or validators. This should make the integration more seamless and secure, according to the release.  

Tezos prides itself on being a mission-critical blockchain and ideal for financial applications. The Chainlink integration will allow Tezos developers to expand the financial services available to users. 

This could mean a longed-for stablecoin for pricing network computations against fiat currency, lending/borrowing to expand credit for financing services, and derivatives for diversified financial strategies. 

The Tezos community is already developing stablecoins, including USD Tez, slated for development next month. 

“Stablecoins are essential to get an on-chain economy going on Tezos,” Vishakh [sic]  from Cryptonomic told Decrypt. With secure and reliable Chainlink oracles becoming available on the Tezos chain, we will finally see multiple stablecoin projects launch on the platform and really unlock its potential.”

But there are plenty of other areas Tezos developers can now explore, such as insurance—for developing countries, shipping protection against damage, and more. 

Chainlink’s oracle currently secures market data for around 30 price feeds, used by DeFi dapps on the Ethereum blockchain platform. 

And Chainlink is seeing no shortage of projects integrating the oracle provider, despite the pandemic. Earlier this month, Nazarov told Decrypt that the team was busier than ever. 

On Wednesday, CasperLabs announced a collaboration with Chainlink, making it the oracle provider for all applications to be developed on its blockchain. CasperLabs will be the first platform to use Chainlink as an integral component of the core platform architecture, said the press release. It probably won’t be the last.