Dear Community,
Thanks all for participating in our Chainlink AMA. We really appreciate all your support. There were really good and thoughtful questions that were asked. For those who missed our AMA, this blog post is for you.
Introduction!
Mayank – Hello @keenanolsen welcome to CryptoNationIN 🥳 Glad to have you here.
Keenan – Thanks for having me 🙂
Mayank – Before we start I request you to tell about yourself and about the Chainlink project.
Keenan – Yes, ny name is Keenan and i’m the community manager for Chainlink. Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that enables smart contracts to securely access off-chain data feeds, web APIs, and traditional bank payments.
Mayank – Great!
Twitter Questions
Q1. The community is critical to the long term success of any project. Chainlink recently launched a Community Grant Program. Tell us about the Grant program and if there are any specific requirements we need to fulfill to apply.
Keenan – Yes, great question. The grant program is to help accelerate the adoption of smart contracts in the real world. I reccommend reading through this blog to learn more about the program itself and in there is a link for you to apply: https://blog.chain.link/introducing-the-chainlink-community-grant-program/.
Q2. As far as I know, Chainlink is already established and popular. So what is the main purpose of having AMA? What latest development of your platform that you want to share to the community? Thank you!
Keenan – Yes, Justin of your team has asked me many times to do an AMA with you so that is the reason for this AMA. To follow the latest developments defintiely follow the Chainlink twitter: https://twitter.com/chainlink and for other AMAs we do with ecosystem projects you can watch Live on the Chainlink youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnjkrlqaWEBSnKZQ71gdyFA.
Q3. Chainlink allows us to create stablecoins linked to fiduciary currencies, currency baskets or commodities, but who is in charge of developing these stablecoins, us as developers or you as a project?
Keenan – Chainlink is just a framework and oracle network giving you to tools to access outside data for your smart contracts.
Q4. Lack of trustworthy oracles is a major impediment to the evolution of smart contracts and there is a need for new oracle technology in smart contract systems. How can Chainlink fill this gap?
Keenan – Chainlink works with the most cutting edge oracle technology and security is at the upmost importance. Our Chief Scientist and co-author of the whitepaper is Ari Juels who is also the creator of the term “Proof of Work” and other team members are of the highest caliber to any other oracle prject by far. You can read about our research from the top minds in cryptography on http://chainlinklabs.com/.
Telegram Questions
Q5. What surprise me is that virtually every project I’ve read about uses Chainlink’s oracle services for price reference. So, what is in Chainlink that has attracted so many projects? Tell us about Chainlink VRF and how it works? How does it benefit smart contract developers?
Keenan – Chainlink VRF stand for Verafiable Random Function. This allows RNG and other crypto-economically secure ways for getting this information for game developers. Read mkore here: https://blog.chain.link/verifiable-random-functions-vrf-random-number-generation-rng-feature/.
Q6. What role do you think Chainlink plays in increasing the adaptability of the blockchain on the global stage? How Chainlink solves Interoperability problem & with which blockchains, Chainlink is interoperatable?
Keenan – Chainlink is blockchain agnostic, you can use Chainlink on any blockchain.
Q7. On your website it says that you have an active, large and growing community that supports the success of the open source Chainlink project. What makes you most proud of your community?
Keenan – I love the inclusiveness of the Chainlink community and how many people are interested in the work that we do. If you’re interested in joining a meetup follow https://events.chain.link. If you would like to grow your local community apply to become and advocate! https://events.chain.link/advocate.
Q8. Many people have heard of Chainlink but still do not fully understand how it works. How can you explain in a simple way how Chainlink works?
Keenan – Chainlink connects outside data to smart contracts. Smart contracts on their own are unable to access data & apis. Chainlink solves this problem.
Hopefully this answers a few questions that I see in here around differences and what makes Chainlink secure and better for developers and plans going forward.
High Quality Data With Premium APIs – Chainlink oracles solve the hard version of the oracle problem by fetching and delivering data to smart contracts from premium, password-protected data sources that require secure credentials management. Other oracle projects only aim to solve the easy version of the oracle problem by accessing free and public data sources that have no quality guarantees. Who is going to want to trigger a multi-billion dollar contract using a free or public API?
Highly Secure and Transparent Nodes – Chainlink oracle networks (feeds.chain.link) consist of security reviewed and tamper-resistant nodes, such as Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems, that are highly transparent where performance and reputation metadata is made publicly available to users (reputation.link). Other oracle projects do not perform security reviews, make performance data available, or disclose the identity of nodes, creating a highly unreliable and opaque network.
Decentralized and Sybil Resistant Networks – Chainlink is the most decentralized oracle network, consisting of hundreds of public nodes (market.link), allowing for the creation of numerous Sybil-resistant and tamper-proof oracle networks that can scale up in decentralization as the value being secured rises. Other oracle projects feature only a small number of nodes, creating extremely minimal or non-existent Sybil-resistance or decentralization.
Defense in Depth – Chainlink employs a defense in depth approach where multiple security solutions are used in combination to increase oracle network robustness and reliability. This includes privacy-preserving cryptography like DECO, trusted hardware such as Town Crier, cryptoeconomic security through implicit/explicit staking, and much more. Other oracle networks do not take this multi-layered approach to security, but instead rely on a single approach, decreasing the end-to-end security.
Solid Security Foundation and Expert Team – The Chainlink team consists of numerous highly experienced and educated academics, such as Chief Scientist Ari Juels, who are industry experts in the field of blockchain oracles, making correct initial assumptions and rigorous validation in the implementation of the most secure and reliable oracle solution possible. Other oracle projects do not have such deep expertise in the field of oracles and do generate original academic papers of their own, limiting innovation and security.
Adoption and Network Effects – Chainlink is the most widely used and adopted oracle solution in DeFi, securing over $3B+ in-production in innovative protocols such as Aave, Synthetix, yEarn, and more, creating a growing network effect attracting more users. Chainlink has undergone numerous security audits and has been time-tested for over a year on mainnet. Other oracle projects do not secure any real value as they have little to no in-production adoption on mainnet, providing users with no case studies or proof of network reliability.
Extreme Flexibility and Generalization – The Chainlink network is a highly flexible and blockchain-agnostic oracle framework utilized by DeFi applications, web services, and traditional enterprise alike. By acting as a universal blockchain abstraction layer, users leverage Chainlink to transmit any kind of data to and from any blockchain environment desired. Other oracle projects are much more limited in flexibility, being isolated to a single blockchain, and/or can only deliver particular types of data on-chain.
Q9. What is OAuth, how does it work and how does it relate to Chainlink? What role does it play on your platform?
Keenan – https://blog.chain.link/oauth-and-api-authentication-in-smart-contracts-2/.
Q10. What are the requirements and basics for running our own Chainlink node?
Keenan – Anyone is free to run a Chainlink node. All the specs and directs can be found here: https://docs.chain.link/docs/node-operator-overview.
Q11. How can i support ChainLink?
Keenan – You can support Chainlink by being a part of our community and following us on twitter and attending events 🙂
Q12. The only way blockchain industry will expand and grow is if we have users that will be able to use products with ease. What are some of the unique features of Chainlink that would help attract more users as well as developers to it?
Keenan – Chainlink is very easy to integrate as a smart contract developer. If you need help join our discord where many developers will be able to help you out https://discord.gg/aSK4zew.
Thank you to Keenan Olsen, and Community for participating in the AMA. Have a nice day
