Following the launch of Chainlink Staking v0.1, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov joined Nasdaq TradeTalks’ Jill Malandrino to highlight Chainlink’s accomplishments in 2022 and predict the biggest advancements the blockchain industry may experience in 2023.
Nazarov recounted a year of unprecedented growth for web3’s leading decentralized oracle network, during which the Chainlink ecosystem grew to more than 1,600 projects utilizing more than 1,000 bespoke oracle networks to enable over $6.6 trillion in transaction value.
“That’s because Chainlink is live on many different chains across many different protocols and many different use cases, so I would say that the transactional footprint that the network achieved this year at over $6.6 trillion is one very big milestone,” said Nazarov.
Another landmark was the launch of Chainlink Economics 2.0, a new framework for continuing to scale the Chainlink Network, which comprises several key tenants such as the Chainlink BUILD and Chainlink SCALE programs along with a roadmap for successive models of Chainlink staking.
Nazarov described advancements across Chainlink’s three main service categories – data, computation, and cross-chain communications – that he expects to see in 2023. In particular, he predicted an increase in low-latency data used by derivatives protocols and identity data within the DeFi space.
When asked how the blockchain industry will evolve in 2023, Nazarov said Chainlink’s oracle technology is powering innovative use cases in emerging industries like DeFi while helping to fix age-old issues in the traditional financial markets.
“I think the blockchain industry is a place where people go to get exposed to new technology as well as a place that solves very fundamental problems,” he explained.
When it comes to new technology, he anticipates DeFi continuing to “take center stage” in innovating the global financial system. At the same time, he said Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve (PoR) is poised to create a new minimum standard for creating transparency around assets in both the crypto industry and traditional financial markets.
“I think what we’re going to see is more and more innovative use cases in DeFi, insurance, and gaming, and that’s going to push the limits of what blockchains can do,” he said.
“But then there’s a few very fundamental things [blockchains] do, namely around transparency and risk management, and I think those will start getting integrated more and more in the traditional financial system. And those integrations will get accelerated if there are any issues in the traditional financial system which blockchains are uniquely able to solve.”
Watch Sergey Nazarov’s full conversation with Jill Malandrino.