Polkadot and Ethereum Classic integrate Chainlink

Polkadot, which aims to build a network that bridges other blockchains, announced the integration of Chainlink on February 24th. This makes it the first project beyond Ethereum to introduce decentralized oracles.

Developers building on Polkadot will now be able to rely on Chainlink’s oracles to securely connect to “virtually any external, real-world resource,” according to the announcement. Off-chain APIs, market data feeds, or even data from traditional markets, could all be linked to

on-chain smart contracts, and feed into parachains on the Polkadot network.

"The integration of Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network on a dedicated parachain can unlock multiple use cases on Polkadot," explains the blog post. "For example, a parachain optimized for self-sovereign identity would be able to reliably query off-chain data such as identity-based digital signatures or verifiable claims using Chainlink’s oracles."

Though Polkadot is still experimenting with a "canary network" testnet, the fully operational Ethereum Classic is promising more immediate applications for Chainlink.

In the announcement on February 27th, Ethereum Classic Labs said it would use Chainlink’s oracles as a "bridge between blockchains and the outside world". More specifically, it hopes to provide "DeFi applications on Ethereum Classic with secure and reliable access to the ETH/ USD price via their Price Reference Contract."

DeFi demands decentralized oracles

Since launching on Ethereum in June 2019, Chainlink has quickly become the dominant supplier of decentralized oracles—securing prestigious partnerships with tech giants Google and Oracle, working briefly with SWIFT, and integrating with some of the largest smart contract projects.

In the burgeoning DeFi ecosystem, Chainlink’s decentralized oracles are well on the way to becoming foundational infrastructure.

Flash loans firm Aave adopted Chainlink’s decentralized oracles in January to provide accurate price feeds from off-chain sources. And BzX, which suffered two exploits in February, has since implemented the oracles to increase the security of its tokenized lending and margin trading platform Fulcrum.

At the time, Sergy Nazarov, CEO at Chainlink tweeted that “We’re in the process of helping BZX solve this pricing data manipulation issue for the long-term by using our decentralized oracle network’s price reference data; providing both a decentralized oracle mechanism and multiple quality data aggregators.”

In the latest expansion effort, Chainlink has forged an agreement with smart contract insurance fund Nexus Mutual, which will be using Chainlink’s decentralized oracles to reliably value ETH and DAI by accessing a DAI/ETH price reference contract.