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2022: Chainlink's (LINK) Year

Sharing an abundance of resources to learn more about Chainlink's vision for the future and how they're executing on that vision today.

13 Jan

Chainlink: the Standard

I’ll keep this short — as you all might know from my tweets back in 2018 concerning the price of Chainlink (LINK), I’m a big believer and investor.

If you’re not exactly familiar with how Chainlink works and why they’re so incredibly useful for those building Web 3.0 — Chainlink is an oracle network. Simply put, they allow any blockchain to use real world data as inputs for their smart contracts.

If you’re not quite familiar with what a smart contract is, just think about a vending machine — the most simple “if this, then that” machine out there.

If I insert $1, then I get a Coca-Cola.

Blockchain technology has allowed for smart contract technology to be completely immutable and deterministic — no longer are the days of probabilistic paper contracts enforced (hopefully) by a third party.

If you’re in the mood to have your mind absolutely blown by a long video, bookmark the YouTube video below. It’s CEO Sergey Nazarov explaining where contracting is now, where Web 3.0 will take it, and how Chainlink will usher in this new era.

Beyond real world data inputs for smart contracts — Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) will provide a universal, open standard for developers to build secure services and applications that can send messages, transfer tokens, and initiate actions across multiple networks.

In layman’s terms, every blockchain will be able to talk to one another seamlessly.

Right now, blockchains like Ethereum (ETH), Avalanche (AVAX), and Solana (SOL) are unable to communicate with one another. Think of them all as different cell phone providers (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile) and their customers can only talk to fellow customers within their respective network.

Well that’s not very efficient and incredibly limiting.

Chainlink fixes that with CCIP — slated to launch, along with staking, later this year as announced in the video above.

While the creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, has been reluctant to confess the need for Chainlink explicitly.. it’s fairly obvious:

Growing Advisory Board

Expanding upon the recent additions to Chainlink’s advisory board. 

  • Former Google CEO — Eric Schmidt

A recent major win for Chainlink was the welcoming of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an advisor in December. Schmidt served as Google's CEO and chairman from 2001 to 2011 and as a technical advisor to the search engine's parent company, Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), from 2018 to 2020.

"Blockchain networks and Chainlink oracles are at a crucial inflection point in terms of growth and adoption," Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said via a press release. "Eric's experience and insights around building global software platforms for next-generation innovation will be invaluable as we help developers and institutions usher in a new age of economic fairness and transparency."

In 2019, Google Cloud began working with Chainlink to build an API that lets smart contracts query the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database, which incorporates information from over 9,000 weather stations.

"Chainlink is a secret ingredient to unlocking the potential of smart contract platforms and revolutionizing business and society," said Schmidt. "I am excited to be helping the Chainlink Labs team build a world powered by truth."

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  • LinkedIn’s Executive Chairman & Former CEO — Jeff Weiner

During his 11-year tenure as CEO at LinkedIn, LinkedIn grew its membership base from 33M to more than 690M, increased its revenue from $78M to $7.9B and expanded the team from 338 employees to over 16,000.

As the company’s Executive Chairman (Head of the Board of Directors), Jeff helps LinkedIn realize its vision of creating economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. He continues to mentor & coach the leadership team, as well as advise on key strategic initiatives.

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  • Coinbase’s Former Chief Technology Officer — Balaji Srinivasan

Balaji spent most of his professional career as a professor at Stanford University — teaching courses pertaining to Cryptocurrency and Blockchain, Computational Biology, and Data Mining.

Balaji found himself leading Coinbase as their CTO in 2018 where he sourced and closed more than $1.5B in deals for Coinbase Custody, organized both the business and technical sides of the USDC stablecoin launch (now at $44B+ in market cap), and supervised the buildout of a wholly new infrastructure for adding assets beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum forks, which enabled support for Stellar, Ripple, and EOS as well as ZEC and general ERC-20 support for 0x, BAT, REP, DAI, etc.

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If you want to explore all of Chainlink’s team of advisors, click here. Make sure to check out Ari Juels. As CEO Sergey Nazarov’s right-hand man, he’s likely the most critical of all advisors to the true realization of Chainlink’s mission.

I’ve also linked more incredible resources for your viewing pleasure below:

Conclusion

I share all of this with you because of my continued dedication to transparency between us. As you can imagine, if I was tweeting about Chainlink at $0.50 and now it’s at $25 — I’ve seen some handsome returns.

I’ve yet to sell, and have a large chunk of my net worth tied up in this asset. I’ve continued to gradually buy more throughout 2021 and look forward to staking my LINK tokens for passive income.

Since the video above went live, LINK is up about +35% in value (while the broader crypto market has more on the choppy side). I’m optimistic that this is only the tip of the iceberg as to what will happen for Chainlink throughout over the coming years.

As always, I’m just a guy on the internet talking about invisible tokens. Please do your own research and never invest more than you’re willing to lose.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice or recommendation for any investment. The content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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