Smart contracts are undoubtedly one of the greatest innovations within the blockchain space because they have the ability to transcend the internet and impact real world functions, specifically with financial functions. For a moment, imagine paying your mortgage or having a bond issuer pay their coupon payment to investors via a smart contract. The ease of doing so through a smart contract versus the current format will not only drastically reduce the amount of operational and security costs but will finally allow blockchain technology adoption to occur on a large scale. The ChainLink project is creating a decentralized network of oracles, which are pieces of software that allow smart contracts on the blockchain to communicate with off-chain APIs and data. Chainlink is aiming to be the first decentralized oracle provider for Ethereum, Bitcoin, and other blockchains. Today, ChainLink trades for $.54 a coin, however, since ChainLink has a first mover advantage within the decentralized oracle network, world-class partnerships with institutions like SWIFT, a scheduled release of their mainet for Q1-Q2, and expansive use case this token could be trading at $2 a coin in 12 months.

Basics:

ChainLink’s parent company, SmartContract.com, was founded in September 2014. ChainLink is a decentralized oracle solution that bridges the gap between the real world and blockchain based smart contracts. The LINK token is used by smart contract owners to pay chainlink nodes for getting data from them and the more LINKs an oracle node has, the more reputable it is. Ticker: LINK

Price: $.54

Ranking by Market Cap: 85

Market Capitalization: $191,549,050 USD

Circulating Supply: 350,000,000 LINK

Max Supply: 1,000,000,000 LINK

Trading Volume (24hr): $4,714,320 USD

Consensus: Ethereum consensus

Team:

The ChainLink team is lead by Sergey Nazarov. Mr. Nazarov began his career building peer-to-peer marketplaces and joined the cryptocurrency revolution in 2011. CTO is Steve Ellis. Steve was previously a Software Engineer and Team Lead at Pivotal Labs, where he worked on securing sensitive HIPAA compliant data and building scalable payments automation software. Advisors of the ChainLink include:

Ari Juels — Co Director of IC3

— Co Director of IC3 Andrew Miller — Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois

— Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Evan Cheng — Director of Engineering at Facebook

— Director of Engineering at Facebook Hudson Jameson — Ethereum Community Manager

— Ethereum Community Manager Jake Brukhman — Blockchain Advisor

— Blockchain Advisor Brian Lio — CEO of Smith+Crown

Drivers of Growth:

ChainLink team has won a competitive bidding process to develop a Proof-of-Concept with SWIFT. SWIFT is the largest international banking communications system, with over 11,000 partner banks. When a bank needs to send an international wire they use the SWIFT network to process this. ChainLink is the only blockchain partnered with SWIFT to facilitate this process. For the PoC, SmartContract’s oracle was used to move interest rates from each of the five participating financial institutions, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Fidelity, Societe Generale and Santander, into ChainLink’s Market Rate Smart Contract. The contract aggregated the data into a single rate that was then used in a virtual representation of a $1 million smart contact bond. If the PoC goes well it could become the SWIFT standard by 2020. The team has put together one of the strongest and most technical whitepapers.(https://link.smartcontract.com/whitepaper) ChainLink has been working on their product for the last 3 years with their initial testnet due in Q1. Within the decentralized oracle network ChainLink has little to no competition and a first-mover advantage as they are working to connect the disjointed Blockchain Ecosystem. There are projects offering centralized network of oracles but integrating those networks with central points of failure with a blockchain project defeats the overall purpose. The ChainLink team is actively hiring more developers and a head of marketing. ChainLink’s decentralized oracle network can open the door for wide spread adoption for any type of financial payments ranging from mortgage, insurance, micro-payments, etc. The most recent partnership for Chainlink team is with ZeppelinOS. ZeppelinOS is an open-source, distributed platform of tools and services built on top of the EVM to develop and manage smart contract applications securely. ZepplinOS is used by projects like OmiseGO, CIVIC, Aragon, STORJ, Tierion, Augur, District0x, Ripio Credit Network. Request network, blockchain version of PayPal, uses ChainLink’s oracle for their FIAT gateways. ChainLink has been chosen as the 2017 Blockchain Applications Cool Vendor by Gartner. This validates the value that CTOs and CIOs see in Chainlink’s more secure approach to connecting smart contracts with critical external resources. ChainLink has also partnered with Cornell’s IC3, to help launch the first Intel SGX secured link between smart contracts and external data. ChainLink has also been selected by the World Economic Forum’s Tipping Point report as the “Shift in Action” for Smart Contracts, for their work on allowing smart contracts in the Bitcoin network to be automatically triggered by external data.

Headwinds:

A huge factor of ChainLink’s success is tied to developing a product that SWIFT will adopt. Since regulation will always trail innovation, the digital currency space can be subject to new regulations in the future.

Summary:

ChainLink has positioned itself to become the bridge between blockchain technology and real-world financial application. It is no longer a secret that blockchain technology will become the bedrock of future society and ChainLink will be one of the most essential players that will facilitate that adoption. With ChainLink’s partnership with Shift, solid progression in their technology development, numerous partnerships, and extensive use case this token can be trading at $6 a coin in 12 months.

For more insights be sure to check out my website:

www.MasiDigitalVentures.com