Chainlink community member TheLinkMarine recently recalled the early days of the Chainlink ecosystem in a 2021 year-end roundup: “Back in 2017, when Chainlink had just launched, its ecosystem consisted of a few projects that you could count on your hands.” Just four years later, the Chainlink ecosystem surpassed 1,000 total integrations, adding a new monthly high of 100 integrations in December 2021 alone.
“It’s incredible to see the Chainlink ecosystem break the 1,000 integrations milestone, and in such a relatively short timespan, too,” TheLinkMarine wrote.
As the Chainlink ecosystem picked up momentum in those early days, TheLinkMarine built chainlinkecosystem.com as an independent resource to keep track of the projects integrating Chainlink oracles and create a visual representation of Chainlink’s adoption throughout decentralized finance (DeFi) and industries like decentralized insurance and gaming that arose in response to new Chainlink Data Feeds.
The site became incredibly popular with the Chainlink community, especially on Twitter, where TheLinkMarine would regularly tweet out a graphic of each month’s new integrations. In 2021, as the Chainlink network hurtled through exponential growth – adding new decentralized services such as Chainlink Keepers and Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) – TheLinkMarine, a full-time senior UI designer, worked late nights and early mornings in order to keep up.
Last week, the Chainlink Community Grant Program awarded TheLinkMarine a grant to do a design overhaul of chainlinkecosystem.com so that it can accommodate emerging industries and use cases as well as projects with multiple Chainlink integrations.
“The entire site will be rebuilt in Webflow, with a newly designed UI and greatly improved UX. I’ll create a database of 1,000+ integrations with deeper levels of filtering including project name, logo, category, description, underlying blockchain(s), and Chainlink services used,” TheLinkMarine told Chainlink Today.
“It’ll also be super easy to toggle between projects that have announced intent to use Chainlink and those that are actually live on mainnet right now.”
TheLinkMarine anticipates the new website will amplify the Chainlink community’s hallmark enthusiasm.
“The energy from the Chainlink community has always been incredible. From Day One, that was one of the things that stood out the most to me. That sense of being a part of a group of people who had all discovered the same gem, who could see the future and the vision so early on, is something quite remarkable.”
Ultimately, TheLinkMarine sees the new and improved chainlinkecosystem.com as a way to give back to the “super supportive and appreciative” Chainlink community.
“The product the Chainlink Labs team is creating is just monumental in its potential to change the world for the better, and will be so beneficial to society on a global scale. It just makes me feel incredibly grateful to be able to contribute something of value to Chainlink and its community.”
The Chainlink Community Grant Program provides financial resources to the many development teams and researchers building a more functional and accessible Chainlink network. TheLinkMarine encourages anyone with a great idea for a Chainlink community resource to start building.
“I’d say just do it. You’ve got nothing to lose, and if it’s a valuable idea, it’ll take off. If you’re wondering about whether or not it’s a good idea, feel free to reach out to the Chainlink team or the community to bounce your ideas off someone else; we’re always happy to help in any way.”
To learn more about the Chainlink Community Grant Program, read this blog post and apply to the grant program here.