During Chainlink’s 2022 SmartCon event, September 28-29 in New York City, Nasdaq TradeTalks’ Jill Malandrino hosted a two-day interview lineup with founders of influential protocols in the Chainlink ecosystem who were among the conference’s 100+ expert speakers.
After her conversation with Matter Labs CPO Steve Newcomb about how zkSync is scaling Ethereum with 10x efficiency gains, Malandrino spoke with Doug Schwenk, CEO of Digital Asset Research (DAR), a “clean” data provider for top-tier institutional clients such as Bloomberg, FTSE Russell, and Wilshire.
DAR’s data is aggregated from a variety of decentralized and centralized exchanges, then filtered for outliers and exchange reliability. Recently, DAR announced that it will deliver its institutional-grade data for 1,000 digital assets on-chain as a data provider for the Chainlink Network.
In a September interview with Chainlink Today, Schwenk said joining the Chainlink Network allows DAR to play a pivotal role in broadening DeFi’s reach.
“DAR brings rigor and governance to crypto data, which increases quality and eliminates noise. The ability for smart contracts to access higher quality data will lead to more efficiency and greater adoption.”
Schwenk told Malandrino that the recent Ethereum merge is also bringing “lots of great things” to the DeFi space, including a sustainable model for staking Ethereum.
When asked about his advice for institutions that are currently navigating the crypto winter, Schwenk emphasized preparing for the future.
“I think the important thing is to think about building for what will come after the winter is over,” he said. “We’re seeing a lot of investment right now by institutional clients in the infrastructure to be ready to be able to use these DeFi tools, to be able to invest in the space, to launch products, so it’s a great time to build.”
Watch Jill Malandrino’s full interview with Doug Schwenk on Nasdaq TradeTalks.