Chainlink (LINK)

Although cryptocurrencies have been in the news for quite some time, there are still some drawbacks and limitations that have continually hindered the technology from being completely adopted as a means of payment and transaction all over the world. ,Issues related to scalability, privacy, security, and physical integration are some of the hindrances that need to be addressed. At the core of the Blockchain technology is the concept of smart contracts, an idea first conceived in 1993.

Smart contracts can be defined as the digital version of legal contracts. The fact that it exists on a decentralized network gives it a beneficial edge because no one can alter it. Smart contracts are executed when a certain number of conditions are fulfilled. However the execution of a social contract requires some data input from the physical world. The Blockchain must acquire and interact with data feeds and an API (Application Programming Interface). The interaction with the physical world requires middleware which is known as an ‘oracle’. Here ChainLink comes into play. ChainLink provides a Blockchain-based secure oracle network (a decentralized source of information) that allows and streamlines the interconnectivity of smart contracts and external resources (Dale, 2019).

Chainlink, in real terms, is a middleware that is built to bridge the gap between the Blockchain-based activity and the physical processes involved in a transaction. It redefines the architecture of oracles and brings them onto Blockchain technology. The actual product was supposedly launched in May 2019 (Paradigm, 2019). On the official ChainLink website, anyone can request a ‘Chainlink‘ to connect their smart contracts with external inputs and/or outputs like Data Feeds (Market Prices, IoT events, etc…), Traditional Payments (Bank Accounts, PayPal, etc…), and Cross-chain (Events on another Blockchain). It is based on the Ethereum Blockchain.

ChainLink was launched by a company named SmartContract, founded in 2014. Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis were the brains behind this project. The CEO, Sergey is an entrepreneur who has had several other ventures previously. The CTO, Steve is a software engineer who has served for other companies as well (CoinSwitch, 2019).

The Team is headed by CEO Sergey Nazarov, who is an entrepreneur with a history of starting up several business ventures and CTO Steve Ellis who is a software engineer who is responsible for the smooth running of the technical aspect of the project. The development team includes many other notable software engineers who have proven themselves in the world of cryptocurrency in the past.

The code is developed by SmartContract who has been working on the project since 2014. According to the company, ChainLink’s decentralized oracle network is capable of providing the same level of security as smart contracts. The technology consists of mainly two parts, the on-chain architecture, and the off-chain architecture. Another protocol known as ChainLink Core is a software that allows the interaction of the on-chain and off-chain infrastructures. Very solid development on GitHub.

After the recent paradigm shift of the crypto-markets towards the science of smart contracts, the world might possibly see Chainlink leading the industry of decentralized smart contract oracles.

SmartContracts has dedicated a lot of time to working and researching ways to improve the Chainlink project, and finally it has started to bear fruits. The project aims to expand its integration into different parts of financial transactions while upgrading the Blockchain and its software technology to further enhance the performance and usability of the technology.

ChainLink has the potential to become the world’s leading decentralized oracle for smart contracts.

A lot of research and hard work has been put into Chainlink since it was announced. However, it was not until 2017 that this Blockchain-based cryptocurrency came under radar and started generating waves of a revolutionary product. SmartContract has been working in the background for quite a while now, focusing on the development of the technology rather than marketing it. Their main agenda is to get market leaders and influencers to back them up in order to promote wide-scale adoption of the technology.

ChainLink has a history of partnership with SWIFT, which is the largest global provider for secure financial transactions. SmartContract is working with them to integrate Chainlink technology to carry out financial transactions (Vasileva, 2019). This can produce great results for the future of technology.

The year 2019 has been tremendous for Chainlink, because the CEO, Sergey, finally announced that the much-anticipated Oracle Network will be launched in May 2019. The cryptocurrency’s price valuation experienced a boom after this announcement (Price, 2019).

Chainlink was alongside popular exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. This was a major accomplishment and development for Chainlink as it was selected on popular opinion and on the merit of its technology. Also, the users are showing increasing interest in the Blockchain and the hype is supposedly based on the anticipation of truly revolutionary technology. A number of notable partnerships have been announced by the company which looks very promising.

Although ChainLink has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, the current circulation has only reached around 350 million till now. A large portion of the tokens is still left to be released, and this might trigger a fall in price valuation of the coin.

The project has been around for quite some time under the umbrella of SmartContract. Through the years, the team has only focused on developing the technology, rather than marketing it. ChainLink is notorious for its weak connections within its community and meager involvement of its users in its development. However, as said before, 2019 bears good news for ChainLink. The trend of little marketing and inactive community has been changing lately and we may see better representation of the technology on different platforms.

ChainLink rightly cashed its growing hype in the year 2019 as it formed a number of partnerships to grow its network of users. Among the popular partnerships are SWIFT, while rumors of big announcements related to Google and Microsoft are making waves in the community, nothing has been made official yet. In March 2019, CEO Sergey announced partnerships with Synthetix, Provable, Bodhi and Naka Chain. Other partnerships include Olympus Labs, Mobilum and Kaiko. The future looks very promising in light of this notable growth of Chainlink’s user network (Paradigm, 2019).

Soon after ChainLink’s popularity, the world of cryptocurrency experienced a paradigm shift towards the building of smart contracts. So far, there are several alternatives competing with ChainLink technology. Among them are Fondu, Incetivai and Callisto Network.