Review on Chainlink by Fabrizio Zampieri
We can consider ChainLink as a connection to external data for smart contracts…
We can consider ChainLink as a connection to external data for smart contracts.
ChainLink aspires to be the bridge between the blockchain world and current business systems. This bridge is known as an oracle (not to be confused with the Oracle brand of databases). Without an oracle for smart contracts, a business would have to completely retool themselves into a blockchain-based operation in order to be compatible with blockchain.
ChainLink is also working on a decentralized network of oracles.
Their solution is a decentralized network of oracles. A smart contract can specify the oracles to obtain the requested information. For example, a smart contract based on a sports bet would require results about the winner. Using multiple sources and achieving consensus will help prevent dishonest activity.
Oracle operators are compensated in LINK tokens. This is a massive use case if their technology is adopted, especially in situations where a smart contract requires multiple oracles.
A bit of history: first of all, there is no roadmap on LINK project. The parent company, SmartContract.com, started in 2014 but this domain name was registered in 2008, before BitCoin... The team has been working on this product for a few years;The ChainLink team, through competitive bidding, won a partnership to develop a Proof of Concept (PoC) with SWIFT, the largest global provider for secure financial messaging (transactions). When banks need to process an international wire transfer, they use the SWIFT system. ZeppelinOS, a major platform for smart contract services, announced their partnership on December 18th 2017. On February 19th, they released news of the “initial implementation of the ChainLink Node in Golang”. Three developers appear to be actively working on it through GitHub. One of the developers is Steve Ellis and the others are not the CEO, Sergey Nazarov. That implies the team is larger than what listed on the website. The mainnet should be launched at the end of Q2 2018.
Pros
- - ChainLink’s partnership with SWIFT, which is used by over 11,000 banks worldwide, allows ChainLink to easily partner with other financial institutions going forward. - With oracle, blockchain technology and smart contract will become vastly more useful. People would be able to execute different kinds of contracts in a trustless manner. - Network effect is present because the ChainLink platform is more useful when it is the go-to source for blockchain data feeds, so that users don't need to go to several sources for different types of data.
Cons
- - marketing campaigns should improve actions and operations. - There is a significant risk for ChainLink investors about dependence on both the CEO and the SWIFT partnership. If any unfortunate uncontrollable event happens to either, this project could implode.
