The price of LINK, the token underpinning the decentralized oracle network Chainlink, has soared to a daily high of $8.86 on Wednesday, a level last seen on May 10.
Though a minor correction has brought LINK to $8.41 by press time, it still represents a solid increase of 10.42% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
This also makes Chainlink's token one of the best-performing assets in the last day as the broader crypto market continues to experience bouts of volatility.
With a market capitalization of over $3.9 billion, Chainlink is currently the industry's 21st-largest digital currency.
LINK's latest price action follows the publication of its updated roadmap for the implementation of staking—a feature that would enable a system of rewards and penalties designed to incentivize the network's proper operation.
First outlined in an April 2021 white paper and followed by a January 2022 teaser, the idea of earning passive income through staking on Chainlink revolves around giving the ecosystem participants, such as node operators and community members, the ability to increase the security guarantees of oracle services by backing them with staked LINK tokens.
The initial implementation of Chainlink, called v0.1, is projected for the second half of 2022 and will mark the beginning of Chainlink Economics 2.0, the project's "new era of sustainable growth and security."
Staking marks the start of #Chainlink Economics 2.0, a new era for the long-term security and sustainability of oracle networks.
In this update, we define the long-term goals, roadmap, and initial implementation of staking in the Chainlink Network.https://t.co/WJkoUzPA0i
Pointing to the deep integration of Chainlink's oracles with leading crypto applications, the company said that "the increase in oracle security and user assurances brought about by staking will be key in helping the multi-chain smart contract economy scale to eventually secure multi-trillion-dollar markets across major global industries."
According to Chainlink, the rollout of the staking mechanism will be similar to the deployment of Chainlink Price Feeds—the company's popular price oracle network for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
The latter started with a single price feed for ETH/USD operated by three oracle nodes and grew to support almost a thousand price feeds powered by more than 50 node operators across twelve blockchains and layer-2 solutions.
Currently, Chainlink is trusted by some of the most valuable DeFi apps, including Aave, Compound, dYdX, Synthetix, Nexus Mutual, and more.
The most recent integration happened last week, with Solana adding support for Chainlink Price Feeds.
Chainlink, which securely brings real-world data to the world of smart contracts, has come a long way since October 2018, when Decrypt first came across the decentralized oracle network provider at Berlin’s annual Web Summit.
With smart contracts being a foundation of DeFi (decentralized finance), oracles that enable them to securely execute based on verifiable real-world events—such as a cryptocurrency reaching a certain value, or a measured lack of rainfall affecting an insurance payout—are...
Chainlink staking rewards
According to Chainlink, the initial staking pool will start with an aggregate size of 25 million LINK tokens, with the goal of expanding to 75 million tokens—based on demand—in the following months after the launch.
The v0.1 staking pool will also be capped in size, offering "a fair entry mechanism […] to help ensure participation from a wide range of community members."
"This entry mechanism will aim to prioritize long-term token holders, who are most likely to actively participate in the alerting mechanism," said Chainlink.
The company added that "stakers participating in the v0.1 release will have their staked LINK locked until at least the release of v1, where they will then be able to choose commitment periods of varying lengths."
Aside from that, separate allotments will be offered to node operators that actively service Chainlink Data Feeds.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
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