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View ChartChainlink is a decentralised oracle network that communicates off-chain data to blockchains. Its oracles securely enable computations both on and off the blockchain, supporting hybrid smart contracts and cross-chain interoperability.
Chainlink itself is not a blockchain; it is a decentralised oracle network, and its LINK token is issued on Ethereum as an ERC-20/ERC-677 token. Chainlink is also an open-source blockchain project, meaning that anyone can view the project's code and contribute.
In 2023, Chainlink introduced the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), designed to enable communication between applications across blockchains and traditional financial systems. CCIP 2.0 launched on October 7, 2026, adding institutional Cross-Chain Verifiers and compliance controls. CCIP has secured over $84 billion in total cross-chain token value.
Institutions and infrastructures adopting Chainlink include Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, UBS and ANZ. In 2025, the United States Department of Commerce used Chainlink to publish U.S. government macroeconomic data on blockchains. On October 31, 2025, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Central Bank of Brazil carried out a cross-border trade finance pilot using CBDCs and smart contracts, connecting Brazil's Drex wholesale CBDC system with HKMA's Ensemble platform through Chainlink.
Chainlink is the product of a blockchain technology startup called SmartContract, which was founded in 2014. Chainlink itself began with a white paper published by Steve Ellis, Ari Juels, and Sergey Nazarov in September 2017. The document outlines their vision for a decentralised oracle network. Chainlink's technology aims to solve one of the core challenges of smart contracts running on the blockchain – providing reliable off-chain data and computation resources for on-chain smart contracts. The project first started to provide services for smart contracts on Ethereum, but now it has extended its services to other blockchains with smart contract capabilities.
Chainlink technology is maintained by Chainlink Labs, and Sergey Nazarov is the Co-Founder and CEO of Chainlink Labs. Under Chainlink Labs, a global developer and research team is further developing Chainlink technology.
LINK is the native token of Chainlink. LINK is a utility and governance token of Chainlink. LINK tokens are the currency used to compensate Chainlink node operators for their services within the network. The trade value derived from these tokens is used to pay node operators for retrieving data from smart contracts, and also for deposits placed by node operators as required by contract creators. Community participants can stake LINK to support the network's cryptoeconomic security.
LINK is a fixed-supply token that pays for and secures an oracle network, not a gas token for a chain. Total supply is capped at 1 billion LINK, and the max supply is also 1 billion LINK. The circulating supply is approximately 748.09 million LINK, representing about 74.81% of the total supply.
LINK is an ERC-677 token that retains all the functionality of an ERC-20 token, so tokens can be stored in any ERC-20 wallet. The Ethereum contract address is 0x5149...f986ca, and the contract can be verified on etherscan.io.
The LINK token was launched in 2017 at a price of less than 20 cents and remained below $1 until 2019. In 2020, prices began to rise sharply. In fact, the price rose from less than $2 in early 2020 to a high of $36 on February 20, 2021. However, despite the meteoric rise of LINK, it has fallen from that high and has not reached this level again.
As you may have gathered from the above, although LINK has generated substantial profits since the beginning of 2020, its value remains volatile. Therefore, investing in LINK may only be worthwhile as a way to support the underlying technology. Otherwise, the high volatility may be too much for most investors to bear.
Nevertheless, as cryptocurrency continues to develop, Chainlink seems to be an important technology. Having an oracle like Chainlink will be key to the long-term stability and feasibility of the entire cryptocurrency sector. If you believe that Chainlink will become the industry standard and the most widely used decentralised oracle network, then investing in LINK may be a reasonable option.
LINK can be purchased on major cryptocurrency exchanges, and can also be stored in any wallet that supports ERC-20 tokens. As with any cryptocurrency, investing in LINK carries risks, including price volatility, regulatory uncertainty and technology risk.
For further information, refer to the official Chainlink website (https://chain.link/), the whitepaper (https://chain.link/whitepaper), the documentation (https://docs.chain.link/) and on-chain data (etherscan.io).
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Trade| Comparison Metric | Chainlink (LINK) | Pyth Network |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture Model | Push Model (Pushes updated data on-chain periodically or when price variance thresholds trigger) | Pull Model (DApps/users request and pull required data on-chain on demand) |
| Market Focus | DeFi price feeds, cross-chain messaging (CCIP), RWAs, and institutional enterprise solutions | High-frequency trading (HFT), sub-second derivatives, and decentralized exchanges |
| Chain Support | Extensive coverage across EVM chains, Layer 2s, non-EVM networks, and TradFi integrations | Primary concentration on Solana, high-throughput Layer 1s, and Layer 2s |
| Data Source | Decentralized independent node operators aggregating multi-source third-party API data | First-party data (Direct price feeds supplied by institutional market makers and major exchanges) |
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