Yesterday, Chainlink Labs Chief Product Officer Kemal El Moujahid published the second Chainlink Product Update covering key developments and deployments from Q2 2023. The blog post emphasized Chainlink’s vision for extending its reach as a comprehensive web3 services platform which provides developers superpowers to build decentralized applications that give users unprecedented control over their data and assets.
Product updates were grouped into the platform’s three main pillars: data, compute, and cross-chain capabilities. The post also highlighted milestones from events and initiatives such as Chainlink SCALE, the Chainlink Spring 2023 Hackathon, and international developer bootcamps.
Data
Chainlink is focused on accelerating the tokenized asset space with Chainlink Data Feeds. Of particular interest are on-chain derivatives markets enabled by Chainlink’s low-latency oracles. In April, GMX, the largest decentralized perpetual exchange on Arbitrum and Avalanche, announced its integration of Chainlink’s low-latency solution to support perpetuals, swaps, and liquidity in the upcoming GMX V2 protocol.
Chainlink SCALE continues to facilitate the growth of L1 and L2 blockchain ecosystems such as Celo, which joined SCALE to support its mobile-first, regenerative finance (ReFi)-focused ecosystem’s long-term sustainability by giving developers access to Chainlink’s oracle services.
At ETHDenver, Chainlink announced the beta launch of Chainlink Functions, a serverless web3 platform that allows developers to quickly and seamlessly connect smart contracts to virtually any web2 data source. After first launching on Ethereum Sepolia and Polygon Mumbai testnets, Functions went live on Avalanche Fuji testnet in May.
More than 2,200 applicants have joined the Functions beta program, resulting in a “plethora” of feedback and new use cases, such dynamic NFTs created with Space and Time. A recent Functions Masterclass attracted over 1,650 attendees.
Chainlink Proof of Reserve (PoR) uses the same industry-standard oracle network that has enabled more than $7.7 trillion in transaction value to verify that on-chain assets are fully collateralized by cross-chain or off-chain “real-world” assets. In May, Chainlink launched the first Proof of Reserve Data Feed for a liquid staking token via an integration with Swell Network.
Compute
Chainlink Automation is a decentralized service that allows developers to automate regular smart contract triggers without the resources and risks associated with performing tasks manually or through centralized systems. In May, Optimism, a scalable L2 blockchain developed by Ethereum, integrated Automation, which is already being utilized by several projects including BarnBridge, DeFiEdge, Lyra, and Pickle Finance.
Chainlink recently launched the beta for Automation 2.0, which uses a consensus mechanism that boosts security and reduces costs, on multiple testnets. Chainlink is also focused on enabling new use cases by combining Automation with other services such as PoR and VRF.
Chainlink VRF (Verifiable Random Function) is the industry-standard provably fair, tamper-proof random number generator (RNG), which has fulfilled more than 15.8 million request transactions and is currently utilized by more than 6,300 unique smart contracts across multiple blockchains. Chainlink is currently developing VRF V3, aimed at boosting adoption throughout web3 and web2 with enhanced speed and lower costs.
Cross-Chain
One of the biggest highlights from Q2 is Swift’s collaboration with more than a dozen top financial institutions and infrastructure providers, including BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon, Citi, and the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), to further test how entities can transact with a variety of public and private blockchains through Swift’s PKI and Chainlink Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).
On the horizon, Chainlink plans to complete additional CCIP security audits while testing real-world use cases with beta partners before early access mainnet deployment later this year.
Reflecting on Chainlink’s Q2 accomplishments and looking toward the future, El Moujahid wrote,
“We have laid out our vision for the Chainlink platform and we remain heads down executing against it. We have seen strong progress in Q2 and we’re very thankful to our users and community. We remain dedicated to unlocking the full potential of Web3—the creation of a world where fairness, accuracy, and reliability are guaranteed in our digital interactions instead of merely promised by a “just trust us” statement.”
Read the full Chainlink Q2 Product Updates blog post.