Cardano has announced a partnership with oracle solutions provider Chainlink to accelerate the development of its DeFi ecosystem. The news was released at the Cardano Summit, a two-day conference held last weekend.
News from Cardano Summit
Cardano Summit, which was announced as “the biggest online blockchain event ever”, took place on 25-26 September 2021. The two-day conference was filled with presentations, reports, visions of the future and panel discussions.
Among the many events, there were speeches on new partnerships that are expected to be key to the further development of the Cardano (ADA) ecosystem. One of these was a partnership with telecommunications provider Dish Network.
However, the biggest surprise was the announcement regarding the integration with Chainlink (LINK), a leader in the oracles sector. The technology is used to provide high quality data to support smart contracts. In short, Chainlink allows information from the off-chain world to be combined with the protocols of the on-chain space.
An use case example of data from oracles, mentioned in the IOHK statement, is reliable weather data. It stressed that providing them is crucial for “FinTech startups that are trying to enable parametric insurance in sub-Saharan Africa”. Other examples included election results, sports statistics or cryptocurrency rates, which will allow DeFi apps to operate without the need for third-party verification.
Hoskinson: Chainlink was an easy choice
Cardano has been increasingly bold in entering the DeFi space and positioning itself as a major competitor to Ethereum (ETH). Chainlink, on the other hand, is securing billions of dollars in the DeFi, insurance or gaming industry as of today. Their technology offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.
This is why IOHK founder Charles Hoskinson said about the new partnership:
“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.”
He went on to add that data integration will “reduce the go-to-market time for Cardano developers, but it will establish a secure foundation for Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem”. According to him, this will help increase user trust in the entire ecosystem.
In response to this enthusiasm, Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, 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.”
In addition, Nazarov stressed that the use of Chainlink oracle will allow “to quickly gain access to high-quality, real-time price data on a wide range of assets while still maintaining robust security and uptime.” Finally, he added that “this will empower developers on Cardano to build next-generation applications quicker and more securely.”