Chainlink

What Is Chainlink (LINK)?

Founded in 2017, 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, DTCC, Euroclear, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Central Bank of Brazil, UBS, SBI, Fidelity International, 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.

Who Are the Founders of Chainlink?

Sergey Nazarov is a co-founder and CEO at Chainlink Labs. He graduated with a degree in business administration from New York University, with a focus on philosophy and administration. His professional career began as a teaching fellow at NYU Stern School of Business. In 2009, Nazarov co-founded ExistLocal, a peer-to-peer marketplace for authentic local experiences. Nazarov has worked in the blockchain industry since 2010, giving him one of the longest-running tenures of any technologist in the industry, which began only a year earlier in 2009 with Bitcoin’s creation. Sergey initially built some of the first smart contracts before blockchains like Ethereum were even a concept and went on to invent Decentralized Oracle Networks (DONs) in the Chainlink whitepaper. In 2014, he also co-founded CryptaMail, a completely decentralized, blockchain-based email service.

In 2014, Nazarov teamed up with Steve Ellis and launched SmartContract, a platform that brings smart contracts to life by connecting them to external data and widely accepted bank payments. SmartContract was one of the entrepreneurial ventures that led Sergey Nazarov to the founding of Chainlink.

What Makes Chainlink Unique?

Chainlink is the only all-in-one platform that fulfills the requirements of any institutional blockchain use case. The Chainlink platform enables developers and institutions to access all the critical data, interoperability, compute, compliance, privacy, and legacy-system connectivity required for advanced blockchain applications that link the onchain and offchain worlds. Chainlink solves four fundamental problems for institutions interacting with tokenized assets:

The data problem. Tokenized assets need real-world information to be usable in transactions, such as market pricing, reference data, and proof of reserves data. Chainlink is the market leader in bringing real-world data onchain securely and accurately. The liquidity problem. Financial institutions need tokenized assets that can be securely accessed and moved across blockchain networks in order to maximize liquidity. Chainlink CCIP is the only cross-chain interoperability standard that securely connects any public or private blockchain, opening up global markets for tokenized assets. The synchronization problem. Tokenized assets must remain synchronized with legacy systems once issued across multiple chains. Chainlink is the only platform that offers reliable offchain data, system connectivity, and secure cross-chain interoperability, enabling a Unified Golden Record that stays with assets anywhere. The compliance problem. Regulated institutions require compliance enforcement capabilities such as identity verification (KYC), risk screening (AML), exploit protection, and asset-specific restrictions. The Chainlink Automated Compliance Engine extends existing financial infrastructure for identity and compliance data to blockchains and tokenized assets.

Since launch, the Chainlink standard has securely enabled tens of trillions in transaction value across dozens of blockchains and published tens of billions of verified messages onchain. Chainlink actively secures the large majority of DeFi protocols across different blockchains, with near total dominance on Ethereum. As a chain-agnostic platform with thousands of users across the world’s largest financial institutions and DeFi protocols, Chainlink accelerates the adoption of blockchain ecosystems and is used by tens of thousands of developers, including protocols such as Aave, GMX, Lido, and many more.

Chainlink and Google, Introduction of Staking in 2022, and Introduction of the Chainlink Reserve in 2025.

Chainlink has grown from aggregating and providing cryptocurrency price data to DeFi protocols like Aave, to a lot more. The ecosystem currently access over 1B data points, securing over $95B in value across 1,000 project integrations with 700 oracle networks. Mainstream organizations like Swift, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and Euroclear have partnered with Chainlink. Another win Chainlink has secured is onboarding Eric Schmidt, ex-Google chairman and CEO, as a technical advisor to the oracle platform. According to Schmidt, "Chainlink is a secret ingredient to unlocking the potential of smart contract platforms and revolutionizing business and society," and he is interested in helping Chainlink build a world powered by truth. Schmidt joins other notable Chainlink advisors, including former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and DocuSign co-founder Tom Gonser.

In 2025, Chainlink launched the Chainlink Reserve is a strategic onchain reserve of LINK 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.

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Find out more in our deep dive on Chainlink and our technical analysis on Chainlink price now!

Learn more about Decentralized Data Governance.

Want to keep track of Chainlink price live? Download the CoinMarketCap mobile app!

Curious about the crypto space? Read our educational section — Alexandria.

Securing the Chainlink Oracle Platform With Staking

In December 2021, the Chainlink oracle platform introduced the staking of the LINK token to promote "sustainable growth and security."

Staking is a core initiative of Chainlink Economics 2.0 that brings a new layer of cryptoeconomic security to the Chainlink Network. Staking enables ecosystem participants, such as node operators and community members, to back the performance of oracle services with staked LINK and earn rewards for helping secure the network.

Chainlink Economics

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.

How Many Chainlink (LINK) Coins Are There in Circulation?

During the initial coin offering (ICO) for LINK in September 2017, Chainlink announced a total and maximum supply of 1,000,000,000 LINK tokens. The current supply is about 678,099,670 LINK tokens, or about 68% of the total supply, as of end-September 2021. The Chainlink price at ICO was $0.11 and a total of 350 million LINK tokens were sold. This represents an over 200X from the ICO price to Chainlink price today.

Chainlink price experienced a massive bull run in the period around mid-2019 to mid-2020. Chainlink bulls were colloquially referred to as “LINK Marines,'' becoming a well-known meme in the crypto community. Chainlink price reached an all-time high of $52.88 on May 9, 2021, on the back of an overall crypto market rally, as well as ongoing developments in the Chainlink ecosystem.

According to the ICO documentation, 35% of the total token supply will go towards node operators and the incentivization of the ecosystem. Another 35% of LINK tokens were distributed during public sale events. Lastly, the remaining 30% of the total token supply was directed towards the company for the continued development of the Chainlink ecosystem and network.

How Is the Chainlink Network Secured?

In order to bring determinism to the oracle layer, Chainlink has developed a network of decentralized oracle networks (DONs), with each DON involving a combination of multiple security techniques needed to service a particular use case.

The Chainlink stack supports multiple open standards for designing and operating oracle services, which currently span four key verticals: 1) Data, 2) Interoperability, 3) Compliance, and 4) Privacy. Built upon these standards exists an ever-expanding collection of modular, purpose-built oracle services, which can be easily created and seamlessly composed using the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE). CRE is a developer platform and decentralized execution environment for running, managing, and composing oracle services into scalable end-to-end solutions, which run in a highly secure, reliable, and cryptographically verifiable manner.

Where Can You Buy Chainlink (LINK)?

Chainlink and the LINK token are among the most popular cryptocurrencies on the market. Considering this, a lot of exchanges have pushed to start offering trades in LINK. One top exchange to buy Chainlink is Binance.

Other exchanges offering trades in LINK include:

• Huobi Global
• Coinbase Pro
• Gate.io
• Kraken

It is important to consider the fact that investing in cryptocurrency carries risk, just like any other investment.

To check Chainlink price live in the fiat currency of your choice, you can use CoinMarketCap’s converter feature directly on the Chainlink currency page. Alternatively, use the dedicated exchange rate converter page. Popular Chainlink price pairs include: LINK/USD, LINK/GBP, LINK/AUD and LINK/EUR.

You can read more about how to enter the market and how to buy BTC, LINK or any other token on CoinMarketCap’s education portal — Alexandria.