Earlier today (September 25), Niki Ariyasinghe, Head of Business Development (Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa) at Chainlink Labs, discussed with Tim Harrison, Marketing & Communications Director at IOHK (aka “IOG”), the technology company that develops the software implementing the Cardano protocol, a new strategic collaboration that will “help developers build smart contracts for Cardano DeFi applications.”

This strategic partnership between Chainlink Labs and IOHK was announced on Twitter around 17:30 UTC on September 25, i.e. on the first day of the two-day Cardano Summit 2021.

Harrison talked about this collaboration in an IOHK blog post published on September 25. Harrison says that “access to real-world databases will be supplied through Chainlink’s decentralized ‘oracle’ networks which provide tamper-proof, high-quality external data to blockchains, enabling ‘smart contracts’ to execute around datasets such as election results, sports stats, and cryptocurrency rates.”

Here is how Harrison explained what Chainlink does:

“Chainlink provides oracle services to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Chainlink oracle networks enable smart contracts to reliably connect to any external API, leveraging secure off-chain computations for feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, offering global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.“

He then went on to say that Chainlink will be “the preferred oracle solution for Cardano,” which means that “developers using the blockchain will be able to feed Chainlink’s institutional-grade data into their smart contracts.:

Initial support for “market price feeds” will be followed by “support for other Chainlink decentralized services”, such as “sports data for prediction markets, weather data for parametric insurance products, and verifiable randomness for gaming and digital collectables such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).”

IOHK Founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson had this to say:

“Oracles are essential to making real-world data accessible on Cardano and they support advanced smart contracts, such as DeFi applications. IOHK is committed to providing developers with the most secure and robust tooling for building useful solutions on Cardano, making it an easy choice to integrate Chainlink’s market-leading oracle solution…

“Not only will integrating Chainlink price feeds reduce the go-to-market time for Cardano developers, but it will establish a secure foundation for Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem, helping make Cardano more trusted by users around the world.”

Sergey Nazarov, Co-founder of Chainlink Labs, said:

“We’re excited to leverage our extensive experience and expertise by establishing native support for Chainlink on the Cardano blockchain and supporting its next stage of growth into markets like DeFi and beyond…

“Similar to programming interfaces in web app development, developers building DeFi applications on Cardano will be able to plug-and-play Chainlink price feeds into their smart contracts to quickly gain access to high-quality, real-time price data on a wide range of assets while still maintaining robust security and uptime. Ultimately, this will empower developers on Cardano to build next-generation applications quicker and more securely.“

Chainlink Labs’ Head of Blockchain Partnerships told Harrison during an interview:

“We have a tremendous amount of respect for the Cardano ecosystem… A tremendous amount of respect obviously for the technical team behind Cardano – IOG and so on – but also for the collaborative nature of the community as well. So I think there’s a tremendous amount of respect between the Chainlink and Cardano ecosystems.

“Secondly, obviously, a lot of this comes down to timing. Cardano has had an extended period where we’ve had different drops of upgrades over time, and I think obviously the most recent is Alonzo, really about enabling smart contracts. So for us this is really about the right time to engage with the Cardano ecosystem and really a coming together of what is a very highly technically able and powerful platform like Cardano and also bringing together Chainlink, which is really built to enable smart contracts via that off-chain data in particular.“

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

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Image by “Alexas_Fotos” via Pixabay