Polkadot to Use Chainlink Oracles for Interoperability Network

Polkadot will be the first non-ethereum blockchain to integrate Chainlink.

"Chainlink is set to become the first and primary oracle provider for all Substrate-based chains and eventually the entire Polkadot network," Polkadot announced Monday. Chainlink provides price feeds for blockchain applications typically involved in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Among other things, Chainlink communicates prices between crypto networks. Unlike traditional equities markets, cryptocurrencies can be sold by anyone. As would be expected, finding a true market price across disparate bazaars can be difficult. In an interview, Chainlink CEO Sergey Nazarov said the firm’s oracles source pricing data from multiple sources – both on- and off-chain – to come within 1 percent of a true market price.

Launched in 2016, Polkadot was created by ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood. Wood's Parity Technologies, has over 100 developers building infrastructure for the Polkadot project, according to Parity Head of Public Affairs Peter Mauric.

Polkadot is a network for connecting and launching blockchain applications, with its “parachain” technology acting as a bridge between different blockchains.

Until Polkadot launches, Chainlink’s pricing feeds will first service Polkadot’s experimental Kusama network. However, the parachain between Chainlink’s decentralized pricing oracles and Kusama remains under construction, Polkadot said. The partnership started with Chainlink integrating with an unnamed Substrate-based blockchain.

"The integration of Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network on a dedicated parachain can unlock multiple use cases on Polkadot," Polkadot wrote in a blog post announcing the deal. "For example, a parachain optimized for self-sovereign identity would be able to reliably query off-chain data such as identity-based digital signatures or verifiable claims using Chainlink’s oracles."