On the latest episode of Tokenized, a new podcast sponsored by Visa, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov joined Sardine CSO Simon Taylor and Visa’s head of crypto, Cuy Sheffield, to discuss Chainlink’s role in the rise of enterprise smart contracts, U.S. stablecoin adoption, and complex cross-border, multi-currency transactions.
As the standard for onchain finance, Chainlink’s comprehensive web3 services power the majority of DeFi, securing over $95 billion across more than 450 protocols. By allowing smart contracts to securely access offchain data and interoperability across more than 50 networks, Chainlink has enabled over $24 trillion in transaction value throughout the blockchain economy.
Chainlink has also collaborated with some of the world’s largest financial infrastructures and institutions such as Swift, ANZ, and Fidelity International on critical use cases that are paving the way for trillions of dollars in institutional capital to flow onchain.
“Now you have institutional adoption of smart contracts, which creates this even more advanced class of smart contracts known as enterprise smart contracts,” Nazarov explained.
“And they don’t just require data – they require data, connectivity, identity, AI integration, and integration with existing systems. Chainlink is by far the leading platform to provide all those oracles and enable all of these smart contracts – in the DeFi context and in the institutional context – to exist.”
Among the many benefits smart contracts offer traditional financial systems is atomic settlement, which significantly reduces counterparty risk.
“The issue with settlement is if there’s a long period of settlement, something can change. The answer is you remove fraud, you reduce the gap in which fraud can happen, and you achieve that through automation.”
A recent White House Digital Asset Report highlights Chainlink oracles as a key technology for advancing stablecoin and tokenized real-world asset (RWA) innovation in the United States. Last month, Nazarov was at the White House to witness the GENIUS Act, which establishes the first federal guardrails for USD-pegged stablecoins, signed into law.
He anticipates a watershed moment for stablecoin adoption that will accelerate the market for RWAs. A recent use case illustrates how Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) enables the simulated secure exchange of ANZ Bank’s A$DC stablecoin with Hong Kong’s e-HKD CBDC to purchase Fidelity International’s simulated tokenized fund using the Visa Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP).
“Being able to coordinate different chains, different currencies, and enabling instant settlement for that purchase was a really valuable demonstration,” Sheffield said of Visa’s collaboration with Chainlink.
Nazarov explained how the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), which facilitates multi-chain, multi-oracle, multi-jurisdictional smart contracts with inherent compliance and legacy system connectivity, will accelerate this trend.
“These transactions are only going to increase in frequency. They’re going to start going to production. They’re going to become larger and larger, more and more real, and they’re going to happen across more and more chains.”
Last week, Chainlink announced its collaboration with Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE) to bring high-quality derived forex and precious metals data onchain. Nazarov underscored Chainlink’s compatibility with legacy financial systems as fundamental to growing a global blockchain economy.
“We in the Chainlink community have always believed that the capital from the institutions will be critical to our industry’s success,” he said.
Watch the entire episode.