AMA Recap: CRYPTO MINERS X CHAINLINK

Chainlink is a decentralized network of oracles that enables smart contracts to securely interact with real-world data and services that exist outside of blockchain networks. With Chainlink, the traditional systems that currently power modern economies can connect to the emerging blockchain industry to generate more security, efficiency, and transparency in business and social processes. Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network, was developed to allow smart contracts to automate the transfer of data between blockchains and outside systems in a highly secure and reliable manner. It uses a similar model to a blockchain in that there is a decentralized network of independent entities (oracles) that collectively retrieve data from multiple sources, aggregate it, and deliver a validated, single data point to the smart contract to trigger its execution, removing any centralized point of failure.

We hosted an AMA session with ChainLink on 20th January.

Mr. Ramsy was the host from Crypto Miners and Mr. Marc Romero was the guest. He shared delightful knowledge and unique features of ChainLink.

.

Segment 1️⃣: Introduction

.

Ramsy:
Hello everyone 👋 and welcome to the Crypto Miners AMA session With Chainlink

To help us learn more about the featured project of this AMA session, we are lucky to be joined By Mr. Marc Romero

Marc Romero:
Hi CryptoMiners fam!! A pleasure to join your community!

Ramsy:
Hello there 👋

how are you today?

Marc Romero:
Pretty well. Excited for this AMA with you.

Ramsy:
I'm pretty sure that our AMA participants are too very much excited to learn more about Chainlink 😃

So shall we go?

Marc Romero:
OK;LG

Ramsy:
First of all please provide a quick self-introduction for the community

Marc Romero:
Sure!

I’m Marc Romero, a spanish guy that loves Blockchain Technology.

I studied computer science, but honestly, I hated to code.

Ramsy:
Lol 😹

Marc Romero:
Before to get involved in Blockchain ecosystem, I was running a family business dedicated to construction and rehabilitation of buildings.

As you can see NOT RELATED AT ALL!!!

In August 2017, one of my best friends introduced me to Crypto and then I learned a little about Bitcoin and Ethereum. In mid '18 (cryptowinter) I've found a tweet about a project named Chainlink and I was fascinated for their vision.

Since then, I have been learning from different social media until I applied to become a Chainlink Advocate (a volunteer) on February '20, to help to spread the word for the Hispanic Community.

After 8 months of hard work I become a full-time team member 💪

And now I’m the Community Manager for Europe/Latam Communities Chainlink Labs.

That's my experience. 😬

Ramsy:
Wow, that's a pretty cool story 👌

Thanks Marco for this great start

Marc Romero:
👍

Ramsy:
Now let's see our second question from this segment...

Tell us about CHAINLINK. How and when did start this project?

Marc Romero:
good one

Chainlink was created in 2017 by Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis (2 genius), who co-authored a whitepaper introducing the Chainlink protocol.

The same year they network with Ari Juels (Cornell University professor).

Their vision was that Chainlink acts as a "bridge" between a blockchain and off-chain environaments, to solve the oracle problem.

The network is used by smart contracts and was formally launched in 2019 on Ethereum mainnet.

Chainlink published a second white paper in April 2021. That paper, Chainlink 2.0: Next Steps in the Evolution of Decentralized Oracle Networks. https://chain.link/whitepaper

There is detailed a vision for expanding the role and capabilities of decentralized oracle networks to include hybrid smart contracts, which utilize on-chain code and off-chain services provided by oracle networks.

Ramsy:
What is the Oracle problem?

Marc Romero:
Great question since this is BASIC to understand Chainlink!

The “ORACLE PROBLEM” is also known as the “smart contract connectivity problem”.

It refers to a blockchain’s inability to natively pull data from or push data to any external off-chain System.

This is due to the strong security properties created by a blockchain’s consensus mechanism.

In order to create a bridge between the blockchain (on-chain) and the outside world (off-chain), there requires an additional and separate piece of infrastructure known as an “oracle”.

Maybe you want to know what is an Oracle, right?

Ramsy:
Yes. Why not

Marc Romero:
perfect.

A blockchain oracle is a secure piece of middleware that facilitates communication between blockchains and any off-chain system, including data providers, web APIs, enterprise backends, cloud providers, IoT devices, e-signatures, payment systems, other blockchains, and more.

However, the use of a centralized oracle can result in manipulated data inputs and outputs, meaning the oracle mechanism itself needs to be highly decentralized to ensure the security of a smart contract’s execution is maintained end-to-end.

Once that said, Chainlink is a blockchain abstraction layer that enables universally connected smart contracts. Through a decentralized oracle network.

Chainlink allows blockchains (is blockchain agnostic) to securely interact with external data feeds, events, and payment methods, providing the critical off-chain information needed by complex smart contracts to become the dominant form of digital agreement.

Ramsy:
What makes CHAINLINK special in the blockchain space?

Marc Romero:
Ever since Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has become more popular, there has been a growing interest in high-quality oracle services. After all, most of these projects use smart contracts in one way or the other, and they also require external data to run properly.

With centralized oracle services, DeFi platforms can leave themselves vulnerable to a wide range of attacks, including flash loan attacks through oracle manipulation. Multiple incidents like this have already occurred, and they’ll likely keep happening if centralized oracles are still common.

Chainlink is the most widely adopted and time-tested decentralized oracle network for connecting smart contracts in any blockchain to any off-chain datasets or computations The network secures $76B+ for hundreds of dApps, and continues to increase in integrations each day.

Some 2021 metrics

There are now 1129 Chainlink integrations and growing day by day.

Companies like: Amazon, Google, Oracle, SwissCom, Intel, Microsoft, Ernst & Young, Associated Press, Accuweather, T-Mobile, Hedera Hashgraph and SWIFT.

You could view Chainlink integrations at: http://chainlinkecosystem.com/ecosystem

Ramsy:
Moving on...

What is the best way for someone watching today to get started with the CHAINLINK?

Marc Romero:
Perfect time for this one

If you’re a developer take in consideration that TOMORROW, January 21th, a Blockchain Developer Carnival in going on. You could participate in 5-hours of coding competitions, speedruns, and trivia events with Chainlink developer community members.

Check the Blockchain Developer Carnival official site: https://chainlinkcommunity.typeform.com/dev-carnival

Otherways if you’re a Blockchain enthusiasm and just want to learn more you could check our Official Youtube channel where there are a bunch of videos explaining the Technology: https://www.youtube.com/c/chainlink

Also you could find a ton of information at https://docs.chain.link

Ramsy:
Which are your actual PRODUCTS?

Marc Romero:
Good one.

Let me show you our current services in a picture and then I’ll explain just a little of each one.

Let’s go for the 1st one...

•Decentralized Price Feeds, that can be integrated in any DeFi application to obtain access to a high-quality, tamper-resistant, and fresh source of financial market data on a wide range of assets with full market coverage.

I’ll show you how that works with an example:

First, premium data providers aggregate raw price data from a multitude of centralized and decentralized exchanges, accounting for time, volume, and outliers.
Next, independent Chainlink nodes fetch market price data from various premium data providers and combine the results into an aggregated value.
Lastly, multiple Chainlink nodes aggregate their results together off-chain to generate a tamper-resistant oracle report, which is made available to smart contracts.

Check https://data.chain.link for this Data feeds info.

Let's go to the 2nd one... VRF

A Verifiable Random Function (VRF) providing NFTs and on-chain gaming applications a provably fair and secure Random Number Generator (RNG) purpose-built for smart contract applications.

Let’s find some use cases for VRF

3rd one... Proof of Reserve

Proof of Reserve (PoR) enabling smart contracts to audit the true collateralization of any on-chain asset backed by off-chain reserves such as fiat-backed stablecoins, cross-chain tokens, tokenized assets, and more.

And the last one...Keepers

Keepers providing dApp developers a reliable, decentralized, and cost-efficient transaction automation service for triggering smart contract functions and performing contract maintenance by leveraging off-chain computation.

Done. I think your head will explode with all that info. My apologies. 😂

Ramsy:
🌚😸

Marc Romero:
If you want to explore more use cases check this post:
https://blog.chain.link/44-ways-to-enhance-your-smart-contract-with-chainlink/

Actually 77 use cases

Ramsy:
Impressive 👌

Let's move to our last question from this segment...

What is next on the CHAINLINK roadmap? And where is the best place for someone to reach you?

Marc Romero:
For our Roadmap we don’t give timelines buuuut.... there a lot of things under development like:

This is what is coming...

Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) is an open-source standard for the multi-chain ecosystem, enabling cross-chain applications that can send messages and transfer tokens with commands across multiple blockchains.

CCIP aims to establish a universal connection between hundreds of blockchain networks, both private and public, unlocking isolated tokens and empowering cross-chain applications for all on-chain ecosystems.

Check this picture:

This is Chainlink vision of next future

Other things under deveopment...

Modular External Adapters for connecting to any off-chain resource including premium data providers, authenticated web APIs, IoT sensors, bank payments, enterprise backends, other blockchain networks, and more.

Off-Chain Computation such as Fair Sequencing Services for transaction ordering, DECO for privacy-preserving attestations of TLS web session data, Arbitrum Rollups for scalable off-chain Solidity computation, and more.

As you can see there are a lot of work to do! Remember that we’re hiring!! So if you’re interested feel free to check all our open roles at https://chainlinklabs.com/careers#rt-jobs-1

I'll share with you our vision for next years, are you ready???

Right now 230,47 B USD in DeFi
Cryptocurrency: 2,09 T usd

The next one is mind-blowing...

Literally trillions could flow int DeFi

And finally this is our perspectives for adoption...

*This segment ends here*

Ramsy:
Thanks Marc for this well detailed introduction about Chainlink:)

Marc Romero:
Happy to do it.

Ramsy:
Lastly, Is there anything else you would like to share or you want us to know ?

Marc Romero:
My favourite words for community members that want to be involved in Blockchain projects are : DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH.

Also participating in channels like this one is very important!!! Thank you CRYPTOMINERS

Ramsy:
Time To Conclude Our AMA Section

We Wish all the very best for Project
Chainlink And The Entire team behind the project 🤝❤️

Best of luck for the future 💕

If you want to learn more about ChainLink, here are some important links for you;

Website: https://chain.link

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chainlink

Telegram: https://t.me/chainlinkofficial

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/aSK4zew

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/chainlink