This week, Cointelegraph published its annual “Top 100 influencers in Crypto and Blockchain” featuring “the most artistic, analytical and innovative” people and trends shaping the future of decentralization. Sitting at #5 – above Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Shiba dog, and even “The Metaverse” – is Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov in his signature (pixilated) flannel.
Beyond co-founding the blockchain industry’s leading oracle network, which secured over $75 billion in smart contracts by the end of 2021, Nazarov is a passionate spokesperson for key concepts that are changing the way people and businesses form agreements based on cryptographic truth instead of trust. From his framework for understanding web3 to his vision of an oracle-powered truth machine, Nazarov is innovating key technologies with a long-term roadmap to a fairer, safer, more efficient world.
Among Chainlink’s 2021 achievements, Cointelegraph highlighted the network’s expansion beyond 1,000 integrations, the addition of global enterprises like The Associated Press and AccuWeather that are delivering their data on-chain via their own Chainlink nodes, and the launch of critical infrastructure, such as smart contract automation service Chainlink Keepers, outlined in the Chainlink 2.0 whitepaper.
In addition to awarding Chainlink Community Grants to organizations like UNICEF and Green World Campaign that are building blockchain-based solutions to critical social and environmental problems, Chainlink is fostering the next generation of smart contract developers through its exceptionally well-attended hackathons.
In 2022, Chainlink is focused on launching infrastructure for a multichain CeDeFi economy. Nazarov envisions CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol), slated for release this year, as a landmark innovation in the development of web3. Cointelegraph affirmed, “Chainlink’s cross-chain vision is already becoming a reality.”
In a recent presentation about the future of the Chainlink Network, Nazarov detailed an entirely new category of cross-chain hybrid smart contracts that will allow web3 to flourish like web2. Never one to rest on his laurels, Nazarov embodied the visionary persistence emblematic of Cointelegraph’s top influencers when he said of CCIP, “But really, that is just the beginning.”