The release of the new ChainLink 2.0 White Paper has all the details that was covered in the recent Webinar by Sergey Nazarov at Consensus 2021.
“Recently there was a correction in the market and things substantially changed in terms of prices, there were a lot of updates by oracle networks. There were multiple oracles that didn’t perform and didn’t put updates on-chain as expected, but the Chainlink networks that are relied on by DeFi continually provided updates as expected even at gas prices as high as 2500. So at the end of the day, whatever you have to say about this, the system is fundamentally working.”
Only few people are able to realize how far reaching this technology could become. Many of them are literally betting on Sergey. They are like: “Chainlink is the most interesting project in the crypto space. If the vision displayed on those slides comes to fruition you best be holding some LINK. It may take a few years but from a Cryptonomics standpoint. You’re holding a top 3 or 2 and quite possibly the number 1 token in the space based on market cap.”
Sergey Nazarov at Consensus 2021 stated, generally speaking it is ideal to understand where oracle networks sit on the continuum of security and feature richness. So, blockchains are highly secure and they minimize trust assumptions very well, but they are minimal in functionality as they are purposefully made to remain highly limited in their interactions with the external world. This means that they can only do a subset of computation on their own without an oracle network.
At the same time centralized web servers are highly performing, very rich and super connected to all the world’s data and services, but they are not trust minimized. Therefore, their trust assumptions are completely broken. This is Robinhood level trust assumptions completely through the system through a single party. What oracle networks do is to sit on this continuum somewhere in the middle, and they actually bridge the divide in blockchains that create a lot of trust while holding people assets and creating transparency about state, and the centralized web servers. And, all of their data and all of their performant services.
So, oracle networks are a key kind of innovation on how more advanced smart contracts are built. These more advanced smart contracts take the place of hybrid smart contracts in the white paper. And, what we generally consider to be the future of more smart contracts, because they are a combination of real world outcomes made available by possible wider network and they are highly reliable and trust minimized.
