What is ChainLink?
ChainLink: A decentralized oracle service
Smart contracts have been a revolutionary technology brought to us by cryptocurrencies and the implementation of the blockchain in our lives. They provide us with a great way to conduct safe transactions, ensuring they’re only activated when every requirement (specified by users) are met.
However, smart contracts are still limited because of their dependence on the specific blockchain from which they’re issued. Blockchains offset this by using oracles that provide extra data for smart contracts but these are also centralized entities.
That creates a problem: data from oracles must be trusted to use them as a foundation for smart contracts. And data from a centralised oracle is vulnerable to manipulation.
That is where ChainLink comes in, a relatively new proposal (its ICO took place on September 19th) that looks to solve this issue.
1.The Company
ChainLink is a decentralised oracle service.
That means that is a service which provides information and data from external sources into smart contracts to help efficiency and trust in said contracts.
It serves as a connection between smart contracts from a specific blockchain and the external, off-blockchain world by letting them retrieve information unavailable in their specific environment such as bank account payments and by enabling cross-blockchain contact (as in public and private blockchains).
2.The team
ChainLink is a peculiar project because of how many developers it has: two. Yes.
a. Sergey Nazarov: Co-founder, CEO. Also credited as the Co-founder and CEO of Secure Asset Exchange, ExistLocal Inc, and Cryptamail. Part of a seven-person investment team that secured trades with companies including Pinterest and Riot Games.
b. Steve Ellis: Co-founder, CTO. Co-founder and Software Engineer at Secure Asset Exchange and Software Engineer at Pivotal Labs. He graduated from the New York University in computer science.
Besides, advisors include Hudson Jameson (Ethereum Community Manager), Evan Cheng (Director of Engineering at Facebook), and Brian Leo (CEO of Smith+Crown).
3.Market Use.
Smart contracts today are mostly limited to monetary transactions due to the lack of external data.
As stated on their website, “ChainLink is secure blockchain middleware that allows smart contracts on various networks to connect with the critical resources they need to become useful for 90% of use cases. ”
ChainLink allows smart contracts to be used for interest rates derivatives by enabling them to obtain market prices and data from insurance companies. They do so due to the availability of introducing data relevant to an insurable event, such as the time of an accident or information related to a structure, and even trade finances by offering information about shipments and estimated times of arrival.
Their LINK token’s use will be to pay node operators (those who operate nodes and provide external data to smart contracts on different platforms).
4.Mining.
The total token supply is 1billion, and no more will be created.
Thus, mining doesn’t generate new coins. Instead, 35% of tokens will be directed towards node operators, and anyone who wants to obtain data from one of these nodes will need to pay operators using LINK tokens.
The other way to obtain tokens would be through exchanges (so far, Binance, EtherDelta, and IDEX).
5.Investing Notes.
There are many tutorials available online (and linked on their Reddit page) on how to create nodes and become an operator.
Tokens are not needed to be operators. High-quality operators can be “endorsed” by ChainLink.
For more information, you may refer to the following addresses:
● official website: https://link.smartcontract.com
● official Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LINKTrader/
● official Twitter: @Smart_Contract