There has been a reason that Google has become such a giant. It is their ability to create new technology, as well as form strategic partnerships, have made them into the global behemoth that they are. That trend continued on June 14, when it was announced that the company had joined forces with Chainlink on a new blockchain technology project.
The move is a big step forward for Google, which has been looking for a process that can allow it to bridge the communication gap between blockchains and their cloud-based services. Specifically, this will make BigQuery data available in an Ethereum smart contract, by reducing the risks to the blockchain platform. Plus, it would hide transactions so that they appear completely anonymous as well as settle the speculative bets that occur on prediction marketplaces.
Smart contracts require some kind of trigger to activate them. These triggers come out of some specific event but usually comes from off the specific chain. This means that the information must be correct and trusted by all “parties” involved in the transaction for it to be successful.
This is where Chainlinks comes into play. They have created technology that is able to bridge different network services. What this means is that when a trigger is activated, they are able to provide a trusted system that will enable the transaction to occur without security concerns. In other words, they guarantee the security of the transaction while the smart contracts are running.
Chainlink was created by Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis, who are also the founders of SmartContract.com. They created their systems to be a secure “middleman” in the process. “We realized that a reliable oracle mechanism is a gating issue for the creation of most of the use cases that people are expecting from our space, and set out to solve this limitation of blockchain infrastructure with security, reliability, and easy consumption of the inputs/outputs needed by smart contracts to reach this new level of usefulness,” explained Nazarov.
The news of the agreement has sent the value of Chainlink soaring. Not only has their token price climbed, but they have seen a dramatic increase in its overall market capitalization. Following the announcement, the Chainlink token increased to an all-time high of $1.95 before dropping off to $1.72 later in the day.
This is a big deal for Chainlink. Google specifically chose the company as one of the few they were willing to employ their technology. “At a high level, Ethereum Dapps (i.e. smart contract applications) request data from Chainlink, which in turn retrieves data from a web service built with Google App Engine and BigQuery,” explained Allen Day, a Developer Advocate with Google, in a post.
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