Oracle is one of the biggest software companies in the world. As such, the firm’s startup division made waves in the cryptoverse back in June when it unveiled an initiative to help select startups monetize their APIs using Chainlink’s decentralized oracle technology.

Now we know the first companies set to participate in the innovative effort.

Unveiled by the Oracle for Startups team on October 28th, the first round of participants are set to help pave the way for later oncomers to the initiative, which will see Chainlink’s oracles used in tandem with smart contracts on the Oracle Blockchain Platform.

The software giant plans to use the trial meld to help at least 50 startups sell their data to Oracle’s 430,000 customers.

“The goal of the project is to enable an ecosystem where startups can generate new revenue from smart contracts executed on the blockchain through the monetization of APIs hosted on the Oracle Cloud infrastructure and through the collaboration with Chainlink and API marketplace providers,” said Amy Sorrells, the global comms director at Oracle for Startups.

Meet Oracle’s Trailblazers

The inaugural companies in the program are varied in their business visions and range in location from Brazil to India.

All will now strive to sell their data using Chainlink’s oracles, and if the work proves successful, their differences point the way to how businesses of all stripes could explore similar monetization rails in the future. The first phase of participants includes the following startups:

Agropacking Solutions (agricultural supply chain management)

(agricultural supply chain management) AtCash (“trust networks” provider)

(“trust networks” provider) bluField (IoT beacon networks)

(IoT beacon networks) CashPundit (cash flow management)

(cash flow management) Constellation Group (Web 3 venture studio)

(Web 3 venture studio) Credits (blockchain for dApps)

(blockchain for dApps) Crowdz (payments platform)

(payments platform) CyNation (risk assessment platform)

(risk assessment platform) DriveOn (auto insurance platform)

(auto insurance platform) Gravel Coin (gravel supply chain management)

(gravel supply chain management) Insolar (blockchain solutions)

(blockchain solutions) Ld8a (database solutions)

(database solutions) LotsApp (agriculture certification)

(agriculture certification) MaxCentive (incentive platform)

(incentive platform) MonoChain (clothes reseller)

(clothes reseller) North East (data automation infrastructure)

(data automation infrastructure) Quant Network (network interoperability)

(network interoperability) retraced (supply chain management)

(supply chain management) Snapper Future Tech (blockchain solutions)

(blockchain solutions) World Law (court evidence management)

With this first lot of oracle integrations, a key task will be optimizing the process around the envisioned tech melds.

“[Our] team will work with the selected startups to launch Chainlink nodes on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) … and will capture best practices for developing smart contracts that integrate to Chainlink to help build knowledge that will benefit this ecosystem,” Sorrells said.

The global comms director noted these selected startups will collaborate with Chainlink node operators to forge a “network of mutually interested entities.”

“Neutral third-party API marketplace providers like LinkPool and Honeycomb will act as the catalyst by providing services that will cultivate interest and build “chainlinks” between API providers (startups), independent Chainlink node operators, and smart contract developers,” she added.

ChainLink Has Seen Interest from Big Companies

Plenty of cryptoeconomy projects could happily hang there hats in having just one mainstream embrace of their tech in a given year. Chainlink has enjoyed no less than three so far in 2019 alone.

Beyond the Oracle for Startups initiative, Chainlink was most recently named in a project announcement from Thomson Reuters, one of Canada’s biggest brands. Earlier this month, the firm revealed it was teaming up with OpenLaw in a collaboration that will see Chainlink oracles used to add smart contract functionalities to the Contract Express document automation service.

“Smart contracts are going mainstream,” OpenLaw said on the news.

Moreover, this summer the Google Cloud team outlined what it called “hybrid blockchain/cloud applications” that could rely on a stack of Ethereum, Chainlink, and BigQuery, Google’s serverless platform-as-a-service data warehouse.

“Possible applications are innumerable, but we’ve focused … on a few that we think are of high and immediate utility: prediction marketplaces, futures contracts, and transaction privacy,” Google Cloud’s developer advocate Allen Day said at the time.