Chainlink was created by founders Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis. The project was launched in 2017 with a whitepaper, working through their firm SmartContract.com.
The Visionaries Behind the Network
The founders of Chainlink are Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis. Sergey Nazarov, CEO of Chainlink Labs, is a serial entrepreneur in the cryptocurrency industry. He has been working on decentralized technologies since 2011, and eventually became interested in the “oracle problem” – how blockchains can securely access external data.
Steve Ellis, the project co-founder and now Chief Technology Officer, brought the technical know-how to develop the network. Ellis is a software engineer who worked with Nazarov on the Secure Asset Exchange before Chainlink. They recognised that in order for smart contracts to be useful, they had to be able to securely access external data.
Key Contributors and Early Milestones
Nazarov and Ellis are the project’s founders, but Ari Juels was key to its development. Juels is a professor at Cornell Tech and the Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. One of the authors of the initial Chainlink white paper in 2017, he later made contributions to the development of “Town Crier,” which is essentially a hardware oracle. The use of this invention improved the security features of the Chainlink platform.
The project achieved another significant milestone in September 2017 through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). This raised about $32 million, funding the transformation from idea to an operational decentralized network. In June 2019, the Chainlink mainnet was launched on the Ethereum blockchain, and it began to be used as a live infrastructure product.
History and Parent Company
The software company behind the development of Chainlink is Chainlink Labs. Prior to Chainlink becoming the go-to name for decentralized oracles, the team was known as SmartContract.com, established in 2014. This allowed the founders to experiment for several years with how smart contracts could interact with web APIs and bank payments.
Now, Chainlink is the leading decentralized oracle. It powers thousands of applications in different industries, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance, and gaming. By solving the oracle problem, the founders have enabled a new era of “hybrid” smart contracts that can access both on-chain and off-chain data, a development that is furthering the adoption of blockchain technology around the world.
Disclaimer: BFM Times acts as a source of information for knowledge purposes and does not claim to be a financial advisor. Kindly consult your financial advisor before investing.
