In a new video, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov reflected on lessons learned from his recent international travels, particularly time spent in London at Blockworks Digital Asset Summit and ETHGlobal Pragma London; in Dubai at ETHDubai, Token2049, and Blockchain Life; and in other international financial centers such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney.
“The thing I’ve found is that the problems are universal,” he said of the need for a global blockchain standard that supplies the necessary data, connectivity, and compliance framework to execute transactions across all markets.
“Chainlink, as a system, is constructed in a way that it’s flexible enough to work with all kinds of data and to create connectivity across all kinds of chains,” he explained.
As web3’s industry-standard decentralized computing platform, Chainlink provides a comprehensive set of oracle services that are critical for creating and securing tokenized real-world assets and stablecoins capable of scaling onchain finance to billions of global users.
As illustrated by Swift’s proof of concept, Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) allows traditional financial institutions to transact with a wide range of private and public blockchains using their existing infrastructure, unlocking new markets and use cases for tokenized assets while paving the way for a blockchain-powered financial system Nazarov envisions as a global internet of contracts.
He explained how, by allowing value and data to merge into a single system, Chainlink will enable the generation of real-world assets that serve as a unified golden record, which collects and maintains critical information about an asset throughout its entire life cycle on any chain.
Having already enabled over $10.5 trillion in transaction value throughout DeFi, Nazarov said the Chainlink platform has “earned the position” to become “the way the rest of the world operates as it transitions into this new blockchain format.”
He believes virtually any real-world asset throughout real estate, equities, commodities, insurance, gaming, and global trade will be reformatted into this “fundamentally superior” way to perform transactions that are guaranteed instead of probabilistic.
“We have gotten to that point through over seven years of very hard work together with some of the smartest people in the world – some of the best security experts, some of the greatest engineers, and some of the most committed, thoughtful, helpful community members,” he said. “Now we have this chance to be the way the world works for the next 40 to 50 years as this big transition happens, and that is the really exciting thing for me.”
He illustrated how this transition would benefit both developed and emerging markets. The former would eliminate information asymmetries that trigger systemic booms and busts while gaining exposure to new asset classes and opportunities for fractional ownership. The latter would “arrive at a world where people go from zero to one” by gaining access to the global market through cryptographically guaranteed smart contracts as an alternative financial system.
“Over the next few years, we’re really on the cusp of something quite big,” Nazarov concluded. “Just like DeFi couldn’t operate without what Chainlink provided in a secure and reliable way, I don’t see how this big transition can happen without Chainlink providing what it provides in terms of the data, identity, and connectivity.”
Watch the full video.