Adam “Link” Smith

95%+ of the worlds largest investors have zero exposure to $LINK but ~70% of all $LINK is already owned and ~4.2% of all $LINK is already staked

The DTCC Tokenization Service is now live, and this is only the beginning. Explore the service: brnw.ch/21x6JeP

Which country will become a “Chainlink country” 🤔 teapaw.org/i/grok/share/c2f02a12a…

NEW: The Wyoming Stable Token Commission (@wyostable) deprecates its legacy bridge & migrates the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) to Chainlink CCIP. As a leader in digital asset policy, Wyoming is doubling down on security by selecting Chainlink as its exclusive cross-chain infra.

In the newly created role, McCormick will lead Chainlink Labs' institutional engagement strategy, including building relationships with sell-side and buy-side analysts, developing programs for financial institutions and research platforms, and shaping how Chainlink enhances tokenized asset integration, cross-chain settlement, and capital markets infrastructure. McCormick will also champion educational initiatives designed to bring increased awareness to blockchain utility and articulate the unique role Chainlink plays in establishing secure onchain infrastructure. He will also support senior leadership in strategic engagements with banks, asset managers, and market infrastructure providers evaluating or deploying Chainlink. chain.link/press-releases/ch…

Sergey explains TradFi’s interoperability requirements that CCIP solves at the Federal Reserve Payments Innovation Conference: “There's two dimensions to interoperability in the TradFi world because of the existing investment in systems” “The first level of interoperability is getting the existing systems to work with chains. The existing data sources, the existing back-end systems, the existing messaging standards such as SWIFT—all of these existing systems need to become synchronized” “This is where you hear terms like "digital twin" and "fund tokenization" in other areas” “So, there's one level of problems where you have to synchronize existing data, existing back-ends, existing messaging standards with the chains for basic operations” “And our position is that those existing systems are not going to be going away. There's a huge investment in them, they're highly regulated, they meet legal requirements—they meet a lot of very key requirements” “So, the challenge there is synchronizing them. This is the work we've done with SWIFT, the DTCC, and other groups that power those systems in big ways” “The second level of interoperability is the cross-chain level, and that's because you have a lot of fragmentation” “And that's happening because the cost of generating a chain is becoming lower and lower. So, as the cost of generating a chain is cheaper, and as it's easier and easier for more institutions to make chains, there will be more chains” “More chains creates siloed capital. Siloed capital creates risk and creates limitations to market growth. So, you need standards, you need standardized ways to synchronize the existing systems and to synchronize the chains as they grow in amount and fragmentation. That's what we have a lot of experience with”

Sergey: “Everyone will get on CCIP. This is what I predict” He continues: “My view with interoperability is that it doesn't have to be just secure; it also has to provide compliance, and it has to be correctly integrated into institutional systems in order for them to easily utilize it and make it usable for them” “CCIP is the only system that provides all three of those capabilities: security, compliance, and the ease of integration into existing systems” “In the capital markets, I think CCIP will drive a lot of interoperability” “In the public chain markets, there's a number of different solutions. I think many of them will fall away because they don't have security” “Basically, when you look at how many of those solutions are actually built, it's like one or two key holders, and that's it. Like, one or two keys control all the bridges, which in the history of bridges is how all the bridge hacks happen, and the bridge hacks continue to happen in the public blockchain world” “The whole Chainlink network has been live on production for over five years… and has not lost money. So, I think that security track record will over time speak for itself” “And everybody in the public chain world really values security when somebody gets hacked. So, I think in the public chain world, Chainlink is a standard, and I think in the capital markets, it's now becoming a standard” “I think connecting those two worlds will be a very exciting thing for our whole industry because that interconnected web of contracts will really be what our industry is”

Chainlink can provide services and capture fees in the ecosystem of private chains like the DTCC’s Collateral AppChain, as explained by @CatfishFishy “Going back to kind of like where can Chainlink offer value and capture fees, Chainlink actually has inroads… not just CCIP, but also its other services, like, to update the NAV with like proof of reserves, price data, Chainlink functions to service this kind of ecosystem of private chains” “What other protocol which has a publicly traded liquid token can you buy right now that has potential for value capture in the private chain ecosystem, right? I can't think of any for right now, other than $LINK” “So, I just want to point out this other kind of unique advantage the $LINK token has, in that it's able to capture revenue and offer utility to this kind of isolated kind of ecosystems for now, that no other project can really tap into it for the for the time being”

Sergey: “We're in multiple conversations with large banks and asset managers that are in discussions with us about production” “Not POC, not pilot, but production. Real value transactional usage of the system on a consistent, growing basis for significant assets classes”

Bittensor infrastructure operator General Tensor on why they chose Chainlink CCIP for the Bittensor ↔ Base bridge: “Chainlink's CCIP speaks for itself. It is by far the most trusted, most secure interoperability protocol trusted by the largest institutions in the world: BNY Mellon, Citibank, JP Morgan, Visa, Deutsche Bank to name a few” “It's decentralized… Never been hacked. It is truly the world's most trusted bridge protocol” “And so we thought only the best for Bittensor”

Bittensor infrastructure operator General Tensor on why they chose Chainlink CCIP for the Bittensor ↔ Base bridge: “Chainlink's CCIP speaks for itself. It is by far the most trusted, most secure interoperability protocol trusted by the largest institutions in the world: BNY Mellon, Citibank, JP Morgan, Visa, Deutsche Bank to name a few” “It's decentralized… Never been hacked. It is truly the world's most trusted bridge protocol” “And so we thought only the best for Bittensor”

“Maybe the most consequential here in the short run is the use and automation of collateral… once you open those markets to tokenization and automation, everything else follows” — DTCC Digital Assets CTO Dan Doney on Chainlink’s The Future Is On series

Sergey: “You could take a risk on getting wrecked… or just use Chainlink” “The consequences of an oracle failure as shown by history is getting completely wrecked” “You lose people's money, they exit your system, horrible press. By the way, the press doesn't understand exactly what happened, so they're going to blame your system, probably not the oracle system” “And then there's a lot of legal consequences from the point of view of losing people's money” “So having an oracle that doesn't work or that can be manipulated is probably one of the riskiest things you can do on building a DeFi protocol or any other system relying on oracles” “Historically what happens to people that build their own oracle, use low-quality oracles built by others, have oracles that don't really provide any reliability or security guarantees of any kind, don't have decentralization, is basically they get hacked, their system gets wrecked, they have a lot of very negative consequences from that, their community's very upset” "We in the Chainlink community have dealt with the vast majority of these incidents and at that point, they switch over to Chainlink because Chainlink is the reliable option that—for whatever reason—they weren't sure about using. You know, someone built it internally, some friend of theirs, or some investor told them to use some oracle that they invested in without understanding what an oracle is” “Some protocols that switch to Chainlink are able to save themselves and able to restore confidence and able to continue to operate. It partly depends on the size of the failure from the previous one. Some are not able to restore that confidence” “In both cases, at that point, they really, really, really wish that they had just used Chainlink” “So you could take a risk on getting wrecked, having a Coindesk article explaining how you lost everyone's money, have to spend months if not years dealing with your community on this topic… or just use Chainlink, like all the best DeFi protocols that for over five years have been operating successfully, reliably, securely, growing their user bases as a result” “That second option is the one we recommend”

Chainlink Labs CBO Johann Eid drops some alpha on the work being done to use AI oracles to resolve prediction markets “We’re working with many more prediction markets, and one thing we’ve been looking at is how can AI be used for prediction markets to be able to answer any question” “So let’s say you have some random question like: "Is Zelensky going to wear a suit at the NATO summit?" “You could use AI oracles to resolve that”

In 4 days, 4 leading protocols with $3B+ combined TVL decommissioned their legacy oracles & bridges and are migrating to Chainlink. ⬡ @KelpDAO ⬡ @SolvProtocol ⬡ @re ⬡ @tydrohq DeFi will win.