Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_61b0bd78067c9" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, and now runs a venture firm, Schmidt Futures</li>
 <li>In a statement announcing the appointment, Schmidt praised Chainlink for “unlocking the potential of smart contract platforms and revolutionizing business and society”</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Oracle infrastructure provider <a href="https://chainlinklabs.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chainlink Labs</a> has signed Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, as a strategic advisor.



The Chainlink Network secures oracle data feeds that are responsible for triggering and securing more than $80 billion worth of value locked, across several blockchains.&nbsp;



Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov, said in a statement, “Eric’s experience and insights around building global software platforms for next-generation innovation will be invaluable as we help developers and institutions usher in a new age of economic fairness and transparency.”



Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, and was at the helm for the company’s 2004 IPO at a valuation of $24 billion. Today the company’s ubiquitous Web2 apps like Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, and YouTube helped generate a record <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-global-revenue/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$181 billion in revenue</a> during 2020.



While phasing out his involvement at Google Schmidt co-founded Schmidt Futures in 2017, <a href="https://schmidtfutures.com/our-method/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">which bills itself</a> as a venture facility for public benefit.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“The launch of blockchains and smart contracts has demonstrated tremendous potential for the building of new business models, but it has become clear that one of blockchain’s greatest advantages — a lack of connection to the world outside itself — is also its biggest challenge,” said Schmidt.</blockquote>



A blockchain oracle is critical to the functioning of many smart contracts, particularly when they need to access off-chain data and systems.<a href="https://chain.link/"> </a>Chainlink aggregates such real world data and makes it available to the logic contained in blockchain-based smart contracts.



For example, Chainlink’s collaboration with <a href="https://cloud.google.com/public-datasets" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Google Cloud’s Public Datasets Program</a> allows weather data to be directly available to emerging Web3 capital markets, according to <a href="https://medium.com/google-cloud/hedging-against-bad-weather-with-cloud-datasets-and-blockchain-oracles-7ba3e0150304" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a blog post</a> published by Google Cloud earlier this year. Data from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) database of weather data, can power smart contract crop insurance, and the two companies have built a proof of concept for an Ethereum testnet.



Chainlink has called itself blockchain agnostic, and <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chainlink-announces-cross-chain-interoperability-protocol-ccip-301349599.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> the<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chainlink-announces-cross-chain-interoperability-protocol-ccip-301349599.html__;!!PuLkPvyT3vEAvUES!RAKhHSed1ZZ-o8HhvYyCHboquOWwmcsGZyaTCVbcNVmDbo47L5cTr9ePI2hUK9he3h4$"> </a>Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), to provide a universal, open standard for developers program actions across multi-blockchain ecosystem.



Schmidt’s appointment is unrelated to his prior work at Google, a Chainlink Labs representative told Blockworks.



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