3 min read
Chainlink is on a tear. The decentralized oracle provider has now been integrated in 29 projects in October alone, according to a tweet by unofficial project advocate “The Link Marine.”
Chainlink’s decentralized oracles securely connect blockchains to real-world data. They are fast becoming a ubiquitous part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, with a total of 315 project integrations to date—including 74 blockchains, 98 decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, 23 data providers and 44 nodes.
Every integration has further bolstered Chainlink’s market cap which has grown from $101 million to $4275 million in two short years.
Agoric, a decentralized platform for developing smart contracts with JavaScript, is one of Chainlink’s most recent integrations. The project announced that using Chainlink would allow it to develop new products quicker and without creating custom data feeds, thus enabling developers to more effectively pull together DeFi dapps.
“We've arrived at economics that makes sense—it costs less for a user to use one of our oracle networks, with seven to 21 nodes, than it does for them to broadcast from one node,” Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov told Decrypt earlier this year.
Other popular DeFi protocols like synthetic asset market Synthetix and token exchange platform Kyber Network have also integrated with Chainlink.
The oracle provider has expanded outside the realms of Ethereum-based projects too, with its Polkadot and Tezos integrations, and has formed partnerships and initiatives, with the likes of Swift, Oracle, and Google.
The project even gained a celebrity fan in the shape of Barstool Sports CEO Dave Portnoy. Although that didn’t last long.
Chainlink is also working to make its oracles more secure and to enable new DeFi use cases and adoption. In August, it acquired DECO, a verification protocol for oracles to prove the authenticity of sensitive data, which was created by Cornell University.
The acquisition is aimed at boosting Chainlink’s attraction in gaming, insurance, and enterprise architectures— three big growth areas, identified by Nazarov.
However, not all blockchains and crypto projects have chosen Chainlink as their oracle provider. Some, such as Maker DAO, rely on their own oracle, others use Chainlink competitor, Band Protocol. And, recently, TRON founder Justin Sun launched JustLink, an oracle service that aims to compete with Chainlink.
But with the number of applications integrating Chainlink now increasing almost on a daily basis (to the extent that Decrypt has given up on updating its list,) he has an uphill battle.
Decrypt-a-cookie
This website or its third-party tools use cookies. Cookie policy By clicking the accept button, you agree to the use of cookies.