Chainlink (LINK): A Beginner’s Guide

2021

Chainlink has grown tremendously ever since it came online in 2019. The company reached astronomical heights in 2021 during the 2021 crypto bull market. 

In 2021, the network surpassed a $75 billion total secured value figure. Total secured value figures calculate how many network oracles have been secured or saved from theft. 

That same year, Chainlink expanded the scope of the data it was supplying. The network added Proof-of-Supply, Proof-of-Reserve, Ethereum gas data, election race calls, compliance metrics, total market cap, and sports game results. As a result, the network expanded the types of projects it could be integrated with. 

In 2021, the Chainlink ecosystem grew to include over a thousand projects. More than half of those integrations happened in 2021. This exponential increase meant Chainlink-integrated projects now covered a significant portion of the total value locked in DeFi projects. 

Chainlink has also serviced over 2.5 million requests for secure off-chain computation. 

2022

2022 was an extraordinary year for Chainlink as well. The company surpassed $6.9 billion in Transaction Value Enabled (TVE) and added more than 600 projects to its 1000 project figure from 2021. 

Asides from important strides in market expansion, Chainlink also took enviable strides in talent acquisition.  The former project lead for Google’s Tensorflow, former Diem CTO, and Diem co-founder joined the Chainlink team.

And finally, Sergey Nazarov announced at a conference in 2022 that Chainlink now ran over 60% of all oracle computations for decentralized apps.

Chainlink VRF

As Chainlink grew, so did its opportunities to provide even more services to the decentralized economy.

Chainlink realized that decentralized projects didn’t have a reliable source of randomness. On-chain randomness is subject to block withholding attacks, while off-chain randomness requires a high level of trust. 

Chainlink created the Verifiable Randomness Function (VRF) to solve this problem. VRF was created to provide smart contract developers with true randomness. With each query, Chainlink creates a random number and provides cryptographic proof of how it was generated. This ensures that true randomness is created and outcomes are truly a product of blind luck.