As the crypto universe wades through a rough patch marked by the price declines of major coins and tokens, Chainlink (LINK) remains amongst the more robust ones, even gaining 33.4% on its price just one week prior to this writing.
It remains to be seen whether Chainlink (LINK) establishes itself as a permanent Top 10 cryptocurrency by market cap, going by its strong signals going into 2022. LINK’s current growth trajectory is driven by the network’s release of additional services that increase the total number of integrations possible on the blockchain.
As we speak, LINK has north of 1000 projects happening on its blockchain, with Chainlink services already deployed on major L1s; Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Heco, Avalanche, Starkware, Arbitum, Harmony, Fantom, xDai, Moonriver, and Polygon.
Other bright reasons for a Chainlink-dominant future include the fact that plans are actively underway to build a cross-chain communication protocol for the industry, termed the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), which amongst other functions, would provide smooth and reliable off-chain computations for numerous services.
It is easy to dismiss just how important LINK is to blockchain in general until you realize that the Chainlink network has so far completed (securely) more than1.1 billion data points on its blockchain. No wonder such companies as Amazon Web Services, AccuWeather, and Associated Press have been treating LINK as their entry into the blockchain technology universe.
LINK bulls continue to expect more momentum-driven growth, as was seen in 2021, with critics casting doubt over the growth potential of the LINK token, being that it is heavily leveraged within DeFi, which has similarly been projected to go through a decline for the most part in the near future.
LINK’s value proposition is aggregating all the world’s data onto an open-source accessible public blockchain. Granted, most of this data is thought to come from payment systems, databases, external data, APIs, and data feeds, which calls for strong communication between the smart contracts on the LINK blockchain and these data sources.
LINK deploys smart contracts on its blockchain to coordinate off-chain data systems in the world to bring them on-chain, a move that would normally require an intermediary to adjudicate these transactions. key sectors which LINK has managed to penetrate include; DeFi, Gaming, and DAOs.
Chainlink has established itself as the default provider in the blockchain of all Oracle solutions, which gives the crypto robust working relationships with such institutions as; Hypeledger, Google, Bitcoin, Solipay, Kephis Gallery, Trava Finance, and project Oasis.
LINK works in partnership with Gitcoin Grants whose primary mandate is to increase LINK capacity within the Ethereum network. Further development of Linear Staking on the LINK blockchain is also further set to improve security for users of the LINK ecosystem.
LINK’s off-chain capability also puts it in the unique position where developers are free to build more versatile smart contracts with higher capabilities for scale and automation.
The team at LINK has strived to build feature after feature within the LINK ecosystem, which raises the inherent value of the network and the token represented by it. Besides, the external partnerships that the network continues to make will only see LINK’s value to the marketplace exponentiate, which should reflect in its token price, bar a major market correction. LINK has done a good job of being a blockchain ecosystem within which smart contracts are deployed speedily and efficiently verify data between on-chain and off-chain entities, using blockchain technology.
