ChainLink - LINK - current status review and analysis / discussion

[casperBGD]

ChainLink LINK is an oracle for supporting off-chain data on chains, to deliver online and real-time data for usage in on-chain transactions, and prime source of information for a large number of DeFi projects. This topic is open for discussion regarding the future of ChainLink project and LINK coins.

Contents

Description
Owners / Foundations
Oracle network
Usage
Roadmap
Wallets
Price

Description

ChainLink is decentralized oracle network, that is built on Ethereum blockchain, with a purpose to connect off-chain data to on-chain smart contracts. Project is funded through ICO in 2017, with 350 million tokens sold in ICO. LINK is ERC-20 token, on Ethereum blockchain, improved with ERC-223 functionality for transfer, used to pay ChainLink node operators.

Project health is at 934 (spot 11), as per FlipSidecrypto FCAS score and Grade B by Simetri, with lowest score on Token Performance and Roadmap progress.

Owners / Foundations

The team behind ChainLink consist from Sergey Nazarov as CEO, and Steve Ellis as CTO. Smart Contracts Limited is having their share in total supply of 1 billion tokens, with almost 300 million tokens at the moment.
Technical Advisors include Ari Juels from Cornell Tech, Andrew Miller from University of Illinois, Evan Chang from Novi, Tom Gonser from DocuSign, Hudson Jameson from Ethereum and Brian Lio from Smith+Crown.

There is a tone of opened positions within ChainLink, and one could browse it on https://chainlinklabs.com/careers#open-roles

Oracle network

ChainLink has several price oracles for each of their data that could be provided for on-chain usage, and below is an example for BTC-USD price, with 15 price oracles available for constitution of average price submitted to applications.

Each node is staking LINK to be available as price oracle, and there are incentives for provision of good data and penalties for submission of bad data, where nodes are getting sliced from their staked LINK.

Usage

ChainLink usage had a peak in August 2020, and then dived in the end of the year, but rising again and trying to reach new highs, but until today did not reached peak from August 2020, hoovering just below 30k.

Roadmap

There is no definitive roadmap for Project development, but what could be a takeaway from Sergey interview with Decrypt, is that they are seeing web and enterprise system out from blockchain system to enter blockchain data through ChainLink oracles.

Wallets

All Ethereum wallets that support ERC-20 tokens are good enough for ChainLink, with MetaMask as good choice for low amounts and hardware wallets as primary choice for HODL and large amounts.

Price

Price recently overcome $25 and reached ATH, and currently is hoovering around $25, with market capitalization just below $10 billion, after being over $10 billion on ATH

[Karartma1]

I believe what made a huge difference for ChainLink was to be able to host an oracle at SWIFT, the clearinghouse of all major financial transactions in the world. Then the news of collaborating with partners such as Google, Oracle, Gartner and others gave them another boost. Honestly, to me, is just another protocol. There are many projects that compete on the same field and I don't see Link prevailing.

[casperBGD]

I believe what made a huge difference for ChainLink was to be able to host an oracle at SWIFT, the clearinghouse of all major financial transactions in the world. Then the news of collaborating with partners such as Google, Oracle, Gartner and others gave them another boost. Honestly, to me, is just another protocol. There are many projects that compete on the same field and I don't see Link prevailing.

interesting view, and which project do you see on the top, or think that most of them will have pretty same market share in the end
Link is already in top 10, and it seems that has an intention to stay there, if not entering top 5, and I do not see oracle competition within top 20 at least, since Band is not there, and other oracle protocols are far away? Link progressed far within integration, especially on Ethereum DeFi projects, and that is not a negligible advantage from my point of view

agree that it will be interesting to see which solution will prevail in the future

[Karartma1]

Firstly I think that most coins associated to oracle projects are mostly useless: buying these tokens (like LINK, BAND let's say) to expect a return in the future because these projects might be succesful is not for me really.
A very interesting critic on ChainLink can be found here
https://medium.com/@james.sangalli/why-chainlink-is-not-the-oracle-of-the-future-8bb859a81947

My take is that, in the future, oracle services will be offered by big companies that will put these independent projects under a business value proposition.
I think of Microsoft's sponsored COCO and R3 Corda for example.

[casperBGD]

~snip
A very interesting critic on ChainLink can be found here
https://medium.com/@james.sangalli/why-chainlink-is-not-the-oracle-of-the-future-8bb859a81947

~snip
I think of Microsoft's sponsored COCO and R3 Corda for example.

interesting read, but mostly do not agree with the critics, nevertheless, neither project is ideal, and there are flaws everywhere
he proposes NEST protocol instead of LINK, which does not sound that good

did not catch mentioning of Microsoft and similar in the article, but agree that this could be solution as well, but could not see it as decentralized more than Chainlink

[Karartma1]

~snip
A very interesting critic on ChainLink can be found here
https://medium.com/@james.sangalli/why-chainlink-is-not-the-oracle-of-the-future-8bb859a81947

~snip
I think of Microsoft's sponsored COCO and R3 Corda for example.

interesting read, but mostly do not agree with the critics, nevertheless, neither project is ideal, and there are flaws everywhere
he proposes NEST protocol instead of LINK, which does not sound that good

did not catch mentioning of Microsoft and similar in the article, but agree that this could be solution as well, but could not see it as decentralized more than Chainlink

I should have mentioned the source of COCO and Corda too, sorry. I don't know how familiar are you with so-called DLTs and permissioned blockchains but basically what these projects wants to do is to replicate what it is done by the likes of Eth, EOS, LINK etc. in a controlled environment more prone to business use.
The same also goes with various Hyperledger Fabric implementations and such.
https://fynestuff.com/chainlink-vs-decentralized-oracles-analysis/

[casperBGD]

Geo-location is coming to Ethereum network, for more incentives with GeoDB partnership with ChainLink https://twitter.com/chainlink/status/1359143814292733958

they will provide location data to Ethereum network, as an initial data for dApps based on location services, interesting developments in Crypto community