When Chainlink launched its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) at EthCC earlier this month, Synthetix Founder Kain Warwick joined Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov on stage to examine how CCIP brings DeFi closer to feature parity with traditional finance by allowing projects deployed across multiple chains to manage critical functions like governance and cross-chain liquidity.
In an interview with Nasdaq TradeTalks’ Jill Malandrino, Warwick elaborated on how Synthetix, which integrated Chainlink oracles back in 2019, previously utilized a custom-built CCIP solution and how CCIP’s mainnet launch unlocks vital new utility for all DeFi protocols.
“Synthetix has been using an earlier version of CCIP now for quite a long time, but that version was built as a bespoke solution for Synthetix,” Warwick explained.
While the initial CCIP solution allowed Synthetix to scale between Ethereum mainnet and the Optimism layer-2 chain, Warwick said CCIP’s general access launch paves the way for Synthetix to scale to any chain through just one integration.
“That generalized solution will allow us to move to other networks and to add a whole bunch of functionality,” he said. “We want to be able to expand to chains like Arbitrum and other L1s.”
He underscored how Chainlink’s industry-standard oracle infrastructure supports the growth of protocols like Synthetix and the DeFi industry as a whole.
“The off-chain infrastructure that’s required to pass messages and support price feeds is just incredibly challenging,” he said of Synthetix’s switch to integrate Chainlink instead of building and maintaining its own infrastructure.
“Just separating that function out and handing it over to a partner that we have a longstanding relationship with – and we’re very comfortable with the security that is brought to these services – just makes a lot of sense for us. We’re very comfortable with Chainlink, we’re huge supporters of them, and we’ve been using CCIP for a while now. This is just the generalized version now that everyone gets access to.”