Sebastian Sinclair

<div id="highlights-block_62e86f3fa094d" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Oracle, the world&#8217;s third largest software company by revenue, has tapped infrastructure provider InfStones to compliment its blockchain suite of offerings</li>
 <li>It comes as major tech firms implementing blockchain face profitability headaches amid rising inflation</li>
 </ul>
 
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Oracle, one of the world&#8217;s largest software companies, has teamed up with a budding blockchain infrastructure provider to deliver a scalable Web3 infrastructure development platform for their shared enterprise customers.



Provider InfStones said Tuesday it has teamed up with Oracle in a bid to accelerate the new iteration of the internet.



While Oracle is no stranger to blockchain — having unveiled its enterprise-grade blockchain platform&nbsp;back in July 2018 — its collaboration with InfStones represents a growing trend in Web3 infrastructure development.



Despite that trend, large tech firms adopting blockchain-related technology, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft, could be facing profitability headaches amid mountain inflation, according to an analysis by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierpaz/2022/05/12/the-worlds-largest-tech-companies-embracing-blockchain-face-a-valuation-reckoning/?sh=29c3ea26fe8e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes</a> in May.



Oracle said the combination of its platforms running atop Oracle&#8217;s Cloud Infrastructure will reduce barriers to entry for new companies looking to incorporate distributed ledgers into their stacks.



Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure also offer &#8220;Blockchain-as-a-Service&#8221; platforms. These allow companies to run tailored permissioned (private) blockchain networks hosted by the tech giants.



“Partnering with Oracle Cloud&nbsp;Infrastructure offers enterprise customers a robust cloud infrastructure across OCI&#8217;s multiple regions worldwide,&#8221; InfStones&#8217; CEO Zhenwu Shi said in a statement.



Oracle said it will work with InfStones to bring its enterprise blockchain customers to more verticals and builders across the Web3 development ecosystem. Shi previously <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhenwu-shi-32a1376b/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">worked</a> as a senior software engineer at Oracle. 



Established in&nbsp;2018 as a staking and infrastructure platform providing services to institutional clients, InfStones has since grown to include a node management platform for users alongside an integrated API offering, allowing developers to build applications on blockchain networks such as Polygon, Solana and Chainlink.



InfStones, headquartered in North Texas, counts crypto-native clients including Binance, Circle and Compound. The firm <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/01/softbank-co-led-66-million-round-for-blockchain-focused-infstones/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">closed</a> a $66 million funding in June co-led by SoftBank, and <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2022/06/01/plano-crypto-company-infstones-near-unicorn-status-after-66-million-funding-round/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> the round valued it at nearly $1 billion.



“The power of the InfStones platform and Oracle&#8217;s next-generation cloud infrastructure provides our joint customers with an extremely performant, reliable and secure platform for developing decentralized Web3 applications,” said Chris Gandolfo, senior vice president of cloud venture, Oracle.&nbsp;



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Software Giant Oracle Teams With InfStones for Web3 Development

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>
 
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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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Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Now Advising Chainlink

Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_61840945d1dea" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Market data enables DeFi and other financial use cases of the blockchain to thrive. But to get this data on-chain, you need to use an oracle like Chainlink </li>
 <li>Some of the world’s largest telecom companies are involved in Chainlink’s oracle network</li>
 </ul>
 
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Seventy-five billion dollars worth of smart contracts are secured by Chainlink’s oracle pipes, the company said Thursday, marking a significant milestone for the crypto industry’s largest oracle.



Oracles like Chainlink are the way that decentralized applications on the blockchain, such as decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, obtain data to execute contracts. As many trades are based on things such as the US dollar’s value, Chainlink is the intermediary that allows for this key piece of data to exist on the blockchain. And given that DeFi, as a sector, has over $200 billion in value locked in, there needs to be significant robustness to the network providing it with data.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Market data in DeFi is just the first area where Chainlink is beginning to secure and trigger massive amounts of smart contract value,” said Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, in a statement.&nbsp;



“As more and more organizations launch Chainlink nodes, we’re seeing all sorts of datasets enter blockchains through Chainlink,” he said. “Chainlink oracles are rapidly moving beyond data delivery and into the world of off-chain computation, meaning the network can provide randomness, automation, privacy, and scalability for smart contracts, expanding what those hybrid smart contracts are able to achieve.”



As a testament to just how important these oracles are to the DeFi industry, Swisscom, one of Switzerland’s largest telecommunications companies, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/data-for-defi-switzerlands-swisscom-joins-chainlink-as-node-operator/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced in August</a> it is joining Chainlink’s network as an oracle harnessing its vast, robust network to facilitate Chainlink’s data streams much like it does for the TradFi industry in Europe. Deutsche Telekom’s T-Systems also participates in a similar fashion. In October, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2021/ap-chainlink-to-bring-trusted-data-onto-leading-blockchains" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> that it would provide elections and sports data to Chainlink’s nodes.&nbsp;



Chainlink is the sixteenth largest digital asset by market cap, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/chainlink" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to CoinGecko data</a>, and is currently trading at $30.57, down 3% during the last 24 hours. 



This story was updated for accuracy on November 4, 2021, at 1:17 pm ET.

Chainlink Says $75B Worth of Smart Contracts Secured by Its Network

<div id="highlights-block_610b43eb663bc" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>DeFi relies on real-world data for smart contracts and that’s often validated through Chainlink, one of the world’s largest oracles </li>
 <li>Oracles, data gateways between the real world and the blockchain, are computationally intensive and require secure networks. Swisscom has both. </li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Swisscom, one of Switzerland’s largest telecommunications companies, announced today that it is joining oracle network Chainlink.&nbsp;



In the blockchain industry, oracles are third-party intermediaries that provide smart contracts and decentralized applications with real-world data that allows for contract execution. Chainlink is one of the market leaders in this space and aggregates price data from multiple oracles to produce what it calls a “consensus value”.



As manipulation of this data could lead to material changes on smart contracts, Chainlink requires a secure network in order to maintain data validity.&nbsp;



In an interview with Blockworks, Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of Chainlink, explained that for Swisscom this is an <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/webinars/what-defi-means-for-crypto-market-structure/">infrastructure</a> play to get exposure to the decentralized finance (<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/the-investors-guide-to-defi/">DeFi</a>) space and broader blockchain industry without having to purchase mining equipment.



After all, Chainlink rewards network participants that can operate at scale and maintain a high level of uptime — something that Swisscom can do by virtue of being a telecom.



“Chainlink is a system that rewards highly reliable node operators,” Nazarov said.&nbsp; “[It allows telecoms to be a] winner doing the things they already do, which is providing high uptime and high security for infrastructure. That&#8217;s the distinction because our system doesn&#8217;t compensate people based on ownership of mining equipment or ownership of tokens.”



T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, parent of T-Mobile, also runs Chainlink nodes. Both Swisscom and T-Systems are already large IT service providers for the financial industry in Switzerland and Europe.



Effectively, for the companies, this is the beginning of a shift to the era of decentralized finance by simply replicating what they offer to the traditional finance space.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Swisscom’s digital asset team sees no end in sight to the growth of decentralized financial applications, the company said in a statement.&nbsp;



Nazarov explained that this is a good matchup for telecoms as the Chainlink system doesn’t “compensate people based on ownership of mining equipment or ownership of tokens,” but rather creates a “virtuous cycle” of rewards for data that’s delivered securely.



“If you&#8217;re great at delivering reliable infrastructure, that&#8217;s the model if you want to participate in,” he said.  Chainlink, the twelfth biggest token by market cap, is currently trading at $23.04 down 4.1%, <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/chainlink">according to CoinGecko</a>.



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