Chainlink(LINK)

Chainlink is the industry-standard oracle platform bringing the capital markets onchain and powering the majority of decentralized finance (DeFi). Chainlink stands to benefit the most from emerging blockchain-industry trends, such as stablecoin adoption, real-world asset tokenization, and institutional adoption of blockchain technology. Chainlink is powered by the LINK token, which is used to pay for platform services and secure the network’s proper functioning. Chainlink leverages a novel fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted to LINK tokens and stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve. 

Chainlink is at the forefront of financial innovation and the global tokenization trend. Traditional financial institutions and infrastructures, such as Swift, Euroclear, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Central Bank of Brazil, UBS, SBI,ANZ,  and many others are adopting Chainlink as fundamental infrastructure as they move toward tokenizing trillions onchain. Demand for Chainlink has already generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue across a variety of traditional and decentralized use cases.LINK is the native token of the Chainlink Network, used to pay for services, enhance network security, and earn rewards. Chainlink leverages a novel fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted to LINK tokens and stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve. The Reserve is designed to support the long-term growth and sustainability of the Chainlink Network by accumulating LINK tokens using offchain revenue from large enterprises that are adopting the Chainlink standard and from onchain service usage, which has already generated hundreds of millions in revenue.

LINK price

Given the real-world use cases of LINK cryptocurrency and how Chainlink has managed to forge fruitful partnerships with big names like AccuWeather, Associated Press, FlightStats, FedEx, Aave, Celsius and many more over the years, LINK price has witnessed noteworthy surges in the past.

According to our LINK live price chart, the price of LINK remained well under a dollar from its introduction in 2017 till Chainlink protocol’s official launch on the Ethereum mainnet in May 2019. Thereafter, in 2019, boosted by multiple partnerships with names like Reserve, Polygon and Google Cloud, Chainlink (LINK) price breached the $3 mark by the end of the year.

2020 was another remarkable year for LINK in terms of valuation. It became one of the largest DeFi tokens (based on market cap) in July 2020 and went on a strong rally starting from July 2020 to peak around $20 by mid-August of the same year.

After some sideways action on the LINK price chart, the price surged again with the market-wide rally in January 2021. This time LINK coin price went as high as $37 in February 2021 and posted its all-time high of $53 on May. 10, 2021. LINK’s fully diluted valuation stood at $53 billion at that point given its max supply of 1 billion coins. 

A price correction followed thereafter and LINK receded to around $13 by late July 2021. Despite showing signs of resurgence in September and November 2021, LINK remained muted entering 2022.

How LINK works

LINK is the native token of the Chainlink Network, used to pay for services, enhance network security, and earn rewards. Chainlink leverages a novel fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted to LINK tokens and stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve. The Reserve is designed to support the long-term growth and sustainability of the Chainlink Network by accumulating LINK tokens using offchain revenue from large enterprises that are adopting the Chainlink standard and from onchain service usage, which has already generated hundreds of millions in revenue.

LINK news, updates and highlights

2024

• General availability of CCIP: Chainlink announced CCIP was available for broader usage.

• Swift—the international bank messaging standard for 11,500+ banks—announced they are working with Chainlink to enable financial institutions to connect to any existing public/private chain using Chainlink and their existing Swift infrastructure and messaging standards. Chainlink CCIP was used to enable the cross-chain settlement of tokenized assets across public and private blockchains. The successful collaboration featured 12+ world-leading financial institutions, including Euroclear, Clearstream, ANZ, Citi, BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, Lloyds Banking Group, and SDX. 

• As part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Project Guardian, Swift, UBS Asset Management, and Chainlink demonstrated the issuance and settlement of tokenized funds using traditional Swift fiat payment rails. As a result, digital asset transactions can be settled using the existing Swift fiat payment systems already used by 11,500+ financial institutions, across 200+ countries and territories. 

• Chainlink, together with leading market infrastructures, Euroclear and Swift, and some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including UBS, Franklin Templeton, Wellington Management, CACEIS, Vontobel, and Sygnum Bank, launched an industry initiative to combine advancements in AI, oracles, and blockchains to solve a long-standing problem in corporate actions—the lack of real-time standardized data in fragmented markets like Europe. This initiative is a significant industry milestone that successfully demonstrates how AI, oracles, and blockchains can be combined to convert unstructured, human-readable financial data into structured, machine-readable, easily distributable data.

2025

• Chainlink and J.P. Morgan DvP: Chainlink, in collaboration with J.P. Morgan and Ondo completed the first-of-its-kind cross-chain, atomic settlement of a tokenized asset between Kinexys Digital Payments’ permissioned blockchain network and a layer-1 blockchain network.

• Chainlink partners with Mastercard: Chainlink parntered with Mastercard to enable billions of cardholders to purchase crypto directly onchain.

• Reaching the White House: CEO Sergey Nazarov met the U.S. President at the White House Digital Asset Summit, highlighting Chainlink’s rising role in policy and adoption

• Launch of the Chainlink Reserve: The Chainlink Reserve is designed to support the long-term growth and sustainability of the Chainlink Network by accumulating LINK tokens using offchain revenue from large enterprises that are adopting the Chainlink standard and from onchain service usage.

Frequently asked questions about LINK

• Can you mine or stake LINK?

No, at the time of writing, you can neither mine, nor stake LINK. However, Chainlink staking is slated for sometime in 2022.

• What are some of the best LINK wallets?

Some of the best LINK wallets include Ledger Nano X/S, Trezor, Atomic, Coinbase and Coinomi Wallet along with MetaMask.

• What can you do with LINK?

LINK is used to incentivize node operators and is the native token of the Chainlink network. LINK holders can actively trade the coin against other cryptocurrencies on established exchanges. Chainlink is also planning to allow LINK holders to stake their coins in the future.

• How to buy LINK?

You can buy LINK from any of the well-known centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges, including OKX, Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and Huobi Global. Buy directly with fiat through the ‘Buy’ option, or look out for trading pairs like LINK/BTC, LINK/ETH, LINK/XRP, LINK/USDT and so on, under ‘Markets’, to exchange your crypto coins for it.