Several leading global enterprises – Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom, the Associated Press, and AccuWeather – joined the Chainlink Network in 2021, with more enterprises expected to join the blockchain industry’s leading oracle network in 2022. Last week, Bahrain’s fastest-growing telecommunications operator, stc Bahrain, became the third telecom firm in the world and the first in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to deliver its data on-chain via its own Chainlink node.
Saad Odeh, Chief Wholesale Officer at stc Bahrain, told Chainlink Today that joining the Chainlink Network is an important step for the innovative telecom company, which has positioned itself as a digital enabler at the forefront of innovation in the blockchain space.
“It is a perfect testament to our drive and ambition when it comes to blockchain and emerging technologies,” he said of stc Bahrain’s Chainlink node.
Adding to the company’s diverse, state-of-the-art, high-uptime telecommunications infrastructure, the node is currently live on Ethereum mainnet and expected to expand to other blockchains in the near future. Initially, the node will support Chainlink Price Feeds, which deliver highly accurate and reliable financial market data to secure tens of billions of dollars in smart contracts.
stc Bahrain also plans to broaden the scope of its node to deliver a growing number of diverse real-world datasets (e.g. weather and sports data) and secure off-chain computations (e.g. verifiable randomness) to more sophisticated hybrid smart contracts in emerging web3 industries such as decentralized insurance and blockchain-based gaming.
Odeh described Bahrain’s blockchain-friendly regulatory landscape as an “ideal gateway” for developers and early adopters of new decentralized technologies.
“We are confident that the launch of stc Bahrain’s Chainlink node will serve as a catalyst to bolster adoption of DeFi and web3 applications in the region,” he said, highlighting stc Bahrain’s Chainlink node as the firm’s “first big step in the direction of shaping the future of digital economy in this region and beyond.”
Ultimately, he anticipates the node will help give rise to numerous use cases spanning financial markets and industries such as IOT, insurtech, fintech, real estate, asset management, gaming, and healthcare, telling Chainlink Today, “We are excited to look for some early adopters of this technology and to witness this shift.”
To learn more about stc Bahrain, visit their website and Twitter.