Chainlink launches $100,000 RFP program

In 2020 Chainlink has evolved into one of the most important components of the smart contract platform ecosystem. It is increasingly trusted to deliver continuous, reliable data feeds to hundreds of organizations, both in and out of crypto, to power universal smart contracts. In essence, Chainlink provides the ‘definitive truth’ that smart contracts rely on to execute reliable, secure digital agreements in a manner that is decentralized and not vulnerable to a single point of failure.

Chainlink founder Sergey Nazarov believes that smart contracts will change the way societies distribute wealth, and share, monetize, and utilize critical information resulting in an economically fair world powered by universally connected smart contracts.

To that end, Chainlink has announced a new Request for Proposal (RFP) program that builds on its existing community grant program. The programs are designed to support the rapid growth of the Chainlink ecosystem and provide resources to developers engaging with the ecosystem. Chainlink says it will use these grants “to enable the open-source community to be part of building the Chainlink Network into a public good that will expand the functionality, data richness, and quality of both the Chainlink ecosystem and the entire smart contract economy.”

Chainlink’s new RFP program explained

A Request for Proposal is a document that businesses, governments, and agencies use to outline the specific requirements for a new project. The RFP process is used to solicit bids from qualified vendors and identify which vendor is best-qualified to complete the project. In its blog post Chainlink says its RFP program will make grants openly available to the Chainlink community.

Blockchain integrations will be the first focus of the new RFP program. This year many leading blockchains have integrated Chainlink into their network, including Polkadot, Tezos, Ava, Kava, and Radix.

In terms of the likely applicable skill sets, Chainlink says it is expecting applications from development shops, node operators and even individual developers who have deep knowledge of a specific blockchain. The team who submits the best proposal will be awarded a grant of $100,000 to complete the integration, and Chainlink says there is potential for an ongoing relationship to maintain the integration going forward and for the grant recipient to share in related downstream revenues.

The First Blockchain Integration RFP: Solana

Chainlink’s first RFP is being co-sponsored by Solana and Serum. Solana is a high throughput blockchain, offering a non-sharded, low-latency, high-capacity replicated state machine. Serum is a scalable and liquid decentralized exchange (DEX) for derivatives built on top of Solana.

Chainlink says that integrating Chainlink on Solana will be positive for both companies. “Serum gets access to a high-speed decentralized oracle that can be leveraged within a wide variety of DeFi products on its platform, Solana provides developers with a multi-purpose generalized oracle solution for a multitude of use cases, and Chainlink is able to expand on to more blockchain environments.”

Developers in the Solana ecosystem or developer shops interested in working with blockchain infrastructure can submit an RFP here.