The live price of Chainlink today is $7.53 USD. Chainlink is up 7.71% in the last 24 hours compared to $USD. Chainlink has a live market cap of $7,527,000,000.00 USD, and a circulating supply of 1,000,000,000 LINK.
What Is Chainlink?
Chainlink is a company that was founded in 2017. It creates a way for blockchains to securely interact with external data, events, and payment methods. This is important because it allows complex smart contracts to become more common.
The Chainlink Network is a decentralized network that is powered by a large community of data providers, node operators, smart contract developers, researchers, security auditors and more. The company focuses on making sure that everyone has the opportunity to participate in the network and contribute.
Who Are the Founders of Chainlink?
Sergey Nazarov is a co-founder and CEO of Chainlink Labs. He has a business administration degree from New York University, which he got after studying philosophy and administration. Sergey’s professional career started when he became a teaching fellow at NYU Stern School of Business. In 2009, Sergey co-founded ExistLocal, a peer-to-peer marketplace for local experiences.
Sergey Nazarov is the co-founder of CryptaMail, a blockchain-based email service, and SmartContract, a platform that connects smart contracts to data and bank payments. These ventures led to Sergey founding Chainlink, a company that creates connections between different blockchains.
Steve Ellis graduated from New York University with a degree in computer science in 2010. Immediately after graduation, he became a software engineer at Pivotal Labs. In 2014, he co-founded the Secure Asset Exchange, a company that makes it easy for people to access a decentralized asset exchange.
What Makes Chainlink Unique?
Chainlink is one of the first networks to allow the use of off-chain data in smart contracts. Chainlink has many trusted partners, making it a major player in the data processing field. The integration of off-chain data has attracted the attention of numerous trusted data providers, including Brave New Coin, Alpha Vantage and Huobi. Data providers are also enabled to sell data to Chainlink directly for a profit.
As a decentralized network, Chainlink allows users to become operators of the network and earn revenue by running critical data infrastructure required for blockchains’ success. Chainlink uses a lot of people to help it work. These people are called node operators. They help to make sure that the decentralized price feed networks work well. This is important because these networks help keep track of the prices of things for different applications like Synthetix, Aave, Compound and more.
Chainlink and Google, Introduction of Staking in 2022
Chainlink has grown a lot. Now it provides cryptocurrency price data to DeFi protocols. These protocols use this data to help secure over $75B in value. Chainlink has also integrated with over 1,000 projects and 700 oracle networks.
Chainlink plans to launch staking for LINK holders in 2022. This will help secure the network and earn rewards. Chainlink has been working on this solution for a long time, but oracle networks are not a blockchain. They are a form of decentralized computing. Co-founder Nazarov explained that Chainlink does not produce blocks but “makes a consensus on the prices of data from many oracle networks.” He says the team is finally satisfied with the security and scalability of the consensus mechanism and ready to launch staking this year.
Extending beyond data
Chainlink has been working hard to improve its data capabilities. It also launched new features, like random number generation and Keepers, which enables the automation of complex instructions.
So far, VRF has received over 2.5 million requests for randomness. Oracle networks have been adopted in many different places, like DeFi, centralized finance, gaming, insurance, and NFTs. Some popular projects that use VRF include Bored Ape Yacht Club and Axie Infinity. Pooltogether is a company that uses both Keepers and VRF to help with network computation. The team plans to build out these abilities in the coming year.
Chainlink is also set to launch CCIP, its global standard for messaging and communication between blockchains. CCIP seeks to connect all the blockchains into one “internet of blockchains,” Nazarov says, via cross-chain smart contracts.
“People have not found a way to do this securely at a large scale yet,” Nazarov says. The project has collaborators including Celsius, and tens of billions of dollars have already been pledged, according to Chainlink. But although CCIP will launch in 2022, it will take another year to fully build out—a strategy that’s becoming ever more promising.
