Now to chapter 2, around the partnerships of Chainlink.
To keep the content of the site, in case of deletion due to possible legal decisions, I've decided to post it here..
QUOTE from Zeus Capital:"The Fake Partnerships"
Chapter II of V
II."Partnerships" that should never exist"
The second type of “partnerships” are those with projects, which apparently cannot be integrated with Chainlink yet are more or less famous in the crypto sphere.
Despite the lack of real added value, both projects benefit from the announcement as it acts as a visibility boost.
Expectedly, they do not disclose details of the exact nature of the integration, nor how exactly it is going to work.
After the announcement and the consequent price movements, the crypto community “forgets” to ask questions about the progress as new PR stunts are hitting the wire.
Such a “partnership” includes the one with Ethereum Classic.
Ethereum Classic
Ethereum Classic and Chainlink presumably
partnered in February 2020.
ETC Labs did not provide specific information about the projects they planned to develop using Chainlink. Some
possible use cases were described, such as integrating blockchain with traditional payment systems, market data, and IoT based insurance data.
However, following the announcement no new developments or further details were disclosed.
What’s more, Ethereum Classic reannounced the same news in early July. Why would they do that?
PR!
Everything leads us to conclude that there isn’t anything going on between Chainlink and ETC, at least not yet.
And even if something is cooking, this does not automatically imply a real partnership.
The Pay-for-Plays
Moving on, we have the "partnerships" resembling pay-for-play schemes with lending operators, in which the so-called “partner” enjoys Chainlink’s deep pockets while receiving a boost in its presence across the crypto community.
In exchange, Chainlink gets some sort of credit line which could be utilized when/if needed.
More importantly, the LINK HODLers could access instant liquidity without touching the secondary market. Examples of such symbiosis include Aave, Celsius and Nexo.
Aave
Chainlink announced its partnership with the decentralized lender Aave in January 2020 on Twitter.
The post described Aave as “one of the first DeFi lending protocols to leverage off-chain data for calculating lending rates via decentralized oracles”.
At the time, Aave was utterly unknown, with just a hundred of thousand dollars locked in its contracts:
As the partnership kicked in, Aave quickly entered in exponential growth.
What we find interesting is that
LINK is the most borrowed asset on the Aave platform, with a
total volume of USD 22.9M, which is
close to a third of the total borrowed amount. Digging deeper, we found that a substantial amount of LINK has been transferred from
this wallet to Aave, while withdrawing stablecoins in return.
Assuming these tokens are somehow associated with Chainlink, then the company is able to access instant liquidity without interrupting the secondary market, simultaneously increasing Aave’s visibility.
A proof of the hot relationship between the projects is Aave’s quite emotional reaction to our report:
Zeus Capital want are yet to hear which part of data-supported findings is “garbage”.
Our hypothesis is that
Aave is getting the data feeds from Chainlink for free and “manages” a ton of SmartContract’s assets, once again, out of charge.
Chainlink is promoting Aave to its community, who can borrow against the LINK token without putting pressure on the price.
The result is stratospheric growth for the DeFi project and a new “best partner” for Chainlink.
Celsius
At the end of March 2020, Chainlink
partnered with Celsius Network, another crypto lending platform that will use the Chainlink’s decentralized oracles to strengthen the security and reliability of their lending services.
These claims comical because the latest crypto crash made it apparent that Celsius’s liquidation policies are not automated.
If most of their operations are performed manually, then why would they integrate Chainlink?
Because of Chainlink’s deep pockets.
Celsius’s CEO, Alex Mashinsky, revealed that
in return to Celsius using Chainlink, they will offer treasury management services to Chainlink, amounting to “several million dollars” worth of cryptocurrency. Additionally, Celsius is paying out weekly interest on their deposits to its partner.
At the same time, Chainlink and more importantly, the Link Marines are able “to borrow dollars when they need them so they do not have to sell coins”, meaning Celsius will give Sergey and his cohort fiat when needed.
Now is a good moment to “borrow” in order to support the falling LINK price. And what will happen if the LINK drops and Chainlink is unable to repay Celsius credit?
Their clients will cover the costs.
Nexo
The latest series “pay-for-play” partnerships happened a few weeks ago when
Chainlink announced a partnership with yet another crypto lender - Nexo.
What are Nexo’s benefits for adding LINK as a collateral option while “integrating” the decentralized oracles network?
Let’s take the benefits it straight from ChainLinkGod, who recently (yet unsuccessfully)
pitched Chainlink to MakerDAO:
He proposed DAO to integrate Chainlink for LINK/USD only (giving the limited use case with Set Protocol as an example).
In exchange, he promised a visibility boost, taking pride in what Chainlink has done for Aave.
Apparently, Nexo has fallen for it.
Remember that Nexo is centralized.
Why would they need decentralized oracles?
And have they or Celsius integrated something at all?
To assess what these relationships brought to Chainlink, let’s take a look at on-chain data.
The number of calls in the TransferAndCall function has not changed a lot following the announcements:
Can we see an increase in the On-chain activities following the “integrations” with Celsius and Nexo?
No. These partnerships simply give SmartContracts and the LINK HODLers access to fiat liquidity without the need to touch the secondary market.
In exchange, the lending plaforms are promised a visibility boost and access to SmartContract’s deep pockets.
We won’t be surprised if Nexo also offers “treasury management services” to Nazarov’s fishy company.
Chapter I of V: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5264584.msg54942464#msg54942464
to be continued...
Link: https://zeus-capital.com/news/how-the-link-fraud-trives-chainlink-partnerships/
Show Posts
