On a recent episode of the New Era Finance podcast hosted by Michaël van de Poppe, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov delved into numerous topics from the state of web3 and DeFi to the evolution of government regulation and exciting use cases on the horizon.
Following a crypto-forward inauguration, Nazarov said the future of web3 is “as bright as it’s ever been,” fueled by a new generation that’s increasingly skeptical of fiat currencies alongside growing government participation and adoption by global financial institutions.
As the standard for onchain finance, Chainlink has enabled over $19 trillion in transaction value and provides essential infrastructure for a spectrum of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) – blockchain-based tokens that represent traditional financial assets such as cash, debt, securities, commodities, and real estate as unified golden records onchain.
Nazarov believes the benefits of RWAs – fractionalization, atomic settlement, and programmability alongside better liquidity, transparency, and risk management – are so great that virtually all of the world’s value will eventually be reformatted into a superior state onchain.
“Do we believe that all the real-world things will become tokenized and blockchain-based eventually? My answer is yes.”
He compared Chainlink’s infrastructure to “the pipes under the sink,” providing essential services while abstracting away the complexity for everyday users.
By enabling the flow of data and value between legacy financial systems and various public and private chains, Chainlink provides a single standard for complex multi-step transactions throughout the entire blockchain ecosystem.
“All of those steps can’t happen without something like Chainlink,” Nazarov explained.
“So either you’re going to have to use Chainlink or you’re going to have to replicate what Chainlink does. And the problem with replicating what Chainlink does is that if you build your own version, then other people won’t be on your version; they’ll be on the official Chainlink version.”
Chainlink’s capacity to securely supply the relevant data, connectivity, and computation onchain is what Nazarov believes will “push the edge of what’s possible” in the blockchain industry.
“That’s what I think the Chainlink community is excited about building and that’s what I’m excited about building.”
Specifically, Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) facilitates delivery versus payment (DVP) while verifying critical information such as reserve data via Proof of Reserve or privacy-preserving encrypted identity information via DECO. The end result is a cohesive system that provides access to financial products, such as fractionalized real estate or private equity, that were previously out of reach for many people around the world.
“This is not about just delivering a piece of data, and it’s not just about delivering a piece of identity, and it’s not just about creating a connection,” Nazarov said.
“It’s about being able to do all of those things at the same time to create an advanced next-generation blockchain transaction that is compliant with various laws, that is able to interface with all the different chains, and that is able to interface with all the existing systems including all the data systems and all the legacy backends that control all the money.”
Watch the full interview.