Yesterday, the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark bill establishing the first federal guardrails for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins focused on consumer protection, national security, and responsible innovation. In a new video, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov distilled how Chainlink is working with policymakers to ensure the digital asset economy thrives in the United States and sets the standard for a global method of tokenization.
“Chainlink is heavily involved in D.C. because we see D.C. as a key barometer of what the rest of the world will do,” said Nazarov, who has made several trips to the capitol this year, beginning with the Inaugural Crypto Ball.
He has since met with Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, Bryan Steil, as well as Counselor to the Secretary of Treasury for Digital Assets, Tyler Williams, and personally addressed the President at the first White House Crypto Summit.
“We’re talking to all the top agencies – the Treasury, the SEC, the CFTC – we’re talking to congressmen, senators, the executive branch,” he said.
The goal is to help establish the best approach for DeFi and institutional blockchain adoption within technical standards that define secure, reliable cross-chain connectivity, price data, proof of reserves, identity, and other criteria that support the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) in the U.S.
During his keynote address at this year’s DC Blockchain Summit, Nazarov emphasized why establishing the same majority in tokenized assets as stablecoins – over 90% of which are USD-backed – would be a “fundamental metric of success” for the United States.
As the standard for onchain finance, Chainlink supports three essential properties that distinguish RWAs as superior assets: real-time reserve verification through Proof of Reserve, secure and reliable interoperability through Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), and automated compliance through Automation. Because Chainlink is agnostic across chains, it has the capacity to reformat the world’s value within a universal internet of contracts.
“Our view is that we will be able to set Chainlink up as a standard both in the U.S. and globally and we’re doing this on a practical level by working with various blockchain associations, meeting with the senators and congressmen, meeting with the regulators, meeting with folks in the executive branch and clarifying for them what the right model is,” Nazarov explained.
Having already worked with a number of central banks in different jurisdictions, he said Chainlink is uniquely positioned to describe how a successful global digital assets ecosystem can grow and evolve.
“The governments and the central banks find this expansive and agnostic view from Chainlink to be quite valuable and useful, because it’s not limited to any one use case; it’s not limited to any one chain; and it’s inherently thought of and built up in a way where it actually enables them to transact – not just in their domestic economy, but globally and internationally.”
Watch the full video.