The latest beneficiary of the so-called “Coinbase effect” which takes place when a given cryptocurrency is greenlighted to trade on the popular Coinbase platform, Chainlink, is a relatively unknown cryptocurrency, whose price has surged several hundred percents as its market cap now exceeds $1 billion and ranks 17th in crypto market cap, above Ethereum Classic, Zcash, and Bitcoin Gold.
Chainlink (LINK) has made impressive gains since its initial coin offering in mid-January, soaring over 800% in the last six months.
LINK was trading around the $2-handle in late June before its Coinbase debut gave millions of users the ability to pump the coin +150% from June 27-29; it has since slipped around the 3.50 level.
Launched by the San Francisco-based company SmartContract in summer 2017, Chainlink is a secure blockchain middleware that aims to connect smart contracts across blockchains by enabling smart contracts to access off-chain sources such as data feeds, web APIs, and traditional bank accounts. It provides a reliable connection to solve the ‘oracle problem’ for smart contracts.
Since blockchains cannot access data outside the chain, Chainlink’s oracles allow access to third-party data feeds for smart contracts. Oracles provide external data that triggers smart contract executions upon the achievement of pre-defined conditions. This model was created around LINK coins is based on incentives (through rewards) to provide smart contracts with access to external data feeds.
Should users want access to off-chain data sources, they can submit a requesting contract to ChainLink’s network. These contracts will match the asking settlement with the most relevant oracles.
LINK’s parabolic price move has been driven by the Google Cloud team integrating Chainlink’s oracle middleware with its BigQuery enterprise cloud data warehouse and the debut of Coinbase listing.
Reddit poster, u/colorsdontlie, wrote he was a “developer” and didn’t see Chainlink as a long term investment. Meanwhile, San Fransico-based software entrepreneur, Frank Marcantoni, said Chainlink reminds him of Stripe in their early days with the advantage of blockchain.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2S3bSln Tyler Durden