Chainlink Snags Blockchain Star to Support DeFi Scene

He will use his experience building infrastructure for crypto to help Chainlink grow. The news was shared on Twitter by both Chainlink and Chan and was met with a lot of enthusiasm by the crypto community.

Excited to join @Chainlink! Building infra for crypto is my passion. Trustless digital agreements were a dream when I began my crypto journey. Today, scalable and reliable data networks for smart contracts is what I believe will unlock the next phase of growth for #DeFi. https://t.co/5aBpNXlfhW

— Benedict Chan (@bencxr) October 16, 2020

In his previous position at BitGo, he had a hand in building a scalable and secure multi-signature wallet platform that now powers more than 15% of global BTC transactions. He is also one of the founding members of WBTC DAO. In a recent YouTube interview with Chainklink CEO Sergey Nazarov, Ben stated that he is happy to join the team, noting that he has seen the amazing work Chainlink has done in the DeFi sector. He added,

“I think Chainlink is really going through an amazing phase now. It’s seen huge growth providing reference data infrastructure for DeFi, and what I think is even better is that there is even more potential across other verticals and use cases.”

Ben Chan, former BitGo CTO & WBTC architect, has joined #Chainlink Labs as VP of Engineering. He will enable the engineering team to scale the Chainlink Network's security. Learn more about @bencxr & his role in the recent fireside chat with @SergeyNazarov.https://t.co/9yNqEewwLw

— Chainlink – Official Channel (@chainlink) October 16, 2020

Chan Joins to Support the DeFi Scene

In his new role at Chainlink, Chan will use his experience in building secure infrastructure for crypto to develop a scalability framework for the oracle network that can lower gas costs for node operators and pave the way for even more support to the growing DeFi sector. He said,

“So one of the most exciting things that we are working right now is a scalability solution that will improve network fees like gas fees by an order of magnitude. So what we are implementing is the so-called off-chain navigation, and this works by sending a single aggregate response into the chain for every oracle update.”

This feature requires the following:

• a peer-to-peer networking layer
• an off-chain lightweight consensus model to help oracle networks come to an aggregate response in a distributed and trust-minimalized manner
• a reliable protocol

According to Chan, this will help scale up the number of oracles per feed with almost no extra cost. It’s going to provide huge operational savings per fee at a time when one can’t know how high certain fees on networks like Ethereum could spike.

Positive Reaction From the Community

Chainlink’s Nazarov said they are very lucky to have someone of his caliber and experience building secure systems joining the team. The Chainlink community has had an overwhelmingly positive reaction to this.

Holy crap! Ben is one of the top talent in the whole blockchain world. Congrats, Chainlink.

— Roman Storm (@rstormsf) October 16, 2020

Huge congrats and welcome Ben! From the entire $link community! Best of luck on your journey in building out reliable, scalable, oracle / data networks for smart contracts 👍🏼 pic.twitter.com/B00wSmPXVb

— Drew (@blocksurfing) October 16, 2020

Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network developed to connect data sources outside the blockchain (“off-chain”) to standalone contracts in the blockchain (“on-chain”). It provides real-world data, such as crypto prices, to blockchain-based applications. This technology allows users to exchange assets without the involvement of third parties. The recent developments, however, have had a limited impact on the price of LINK, with the token swirling around the $10-mark in the past two weeks. Following the downswing from the high of $20, LINK seems to be in a recovery phase after touching the $7.50 lows.

Meanwhile, Chainlink recently launched six new decentralized price feeds live on the mainnet for Synthex, a derivatives liquidity protocol providing the backbone for derivatives trading in DeFi, including XMR/USD to support Monero-based DeFi markets.