The upgrade in Chainlink’s oracle service could mean more data availability at lower cost, leading to more applications

A deep technical development, with potentially far-reaching, albeit not obvious repercussions. That’s how we could summarize today’s announcement by Chainlink, regarding the upgrade in its network.

Chainlink is the maker of the homonymous oracle service, which powers between 50% and 80% of DeFi applications, according to Chainlink CEO Sergey Nazarov. ZDNet caught up with Nazarov to discuss the upgrade, as well as blockchain applications, DeFi, data availability, and how they are all connected.

DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance. In short, DeFi’s promise is to be able to cut out middlemen from all kinds of transactions. Similar to how 2017 was the year of ICOs, 2020 was the year of DeFi. Lots of growth, some of it warranted, although oftentimes the “decentralized” part was more of a euphemism, and governance remains a sore spot.

DeFi applications are built on the Ethereum blockchain, utilizing its smart contract capabilities. You can think of smart contracts as programs that execute exactly as they are set up by their creators on the Ethereum blockchain.

Read the full article on ZDNet