Chainlink

With Chainlink, developers architected a real-time data feed for smart contracts operating on blockchain networks. Chainlink incentivizes data providers, or oracles, to be rewarded for bridging smart contracts with external data sources.

Today, Chainlink oracles support smart contracts on any blockchain.

Chainlink was created in June 2017 by a startup, SmartContact, co-founded by Steve Ellis and Sergey Nazarov. At that time, the white paper envisioned a blockchain agnostic centralized oracle system for verifying incoming information. In 2020, the 2.0 version highlighted a transition to a decentralized oracle network which would allow blockchains to listen and receive data from off-chain systems as well as output and validate on-chain data to non-blockchain systems.

The public sale of LINK, the native token was held on September 19, 2017.

Chainlink’s scalability hinges on the platform’s ability to process data across oracles. Chainlink features off-chain reporting, boosting the efficiency of data processing across the oracle network. This feature allows Chainlink to provide a greater magnitude of real-world data directly to smart contracts, so innovators may better architect Web3 software applications.