Founded a decade ago, Chainlink has provided essential infrastructure for blockchains and their stakeholders. The company is now addressing a big problem: how to connect blockchains to each other and to traditional finance. Its July 2023 launch of the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) connected several public and private blockchains and banks, including BNP Paribas, Citi, and Lloyds, among others. Chainlink compares what it has created to TCP/IP, the protocol that computers use to transmit data across the internet. To demonstrate its capabilities as a unified interface for moving data and assets securely across blockchains, it conducted a successful trial last summer with Swift, the financial messaging service that operates across a global network of more than 11,000 banks.
Chainlink’s work is essential for tokenizing real-world assets, as Securitize and Figure do, to mature and proliferate. Accessing these assets across blockchains opens up access and liquidity. In September, the large Australian bank ANZ used CCIP for tokenized transactions, and Chainlink added support for Coinbase’s Base blockchain.
With additional reporting by Ben Schiller
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