At the end of last week, Chainlink (LINK) deployed its oracles on the decentralized betting platform Polymarket. Here are the new features resulting from this partnership.
Chainlink (LINK) arrives on Polymarket
On Friday, Chainlink (LINK) and Polymarket formalized a partnership to deploy the industry leader’s oracles on the popular prediction market platform.
As a quick reminder, oracles are an essential component of decentralized finance (DeFi), as they allow real-world data to be added to closed environments such as blockchains. Without them, DeFi applications would not be able to function properly, even when it comes to cryptocurrency prices.
In fact, this collaboration initially focuses on prices. Chainlink oracles are already operational on Polygon (POL), the network where Polymarket operates, providing real-time prices for “hundreds of cryptocurrency pairs.”
This new feature should improve the platform’s accuracy for all bets related to crypto prices.
Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, expressed his enthusiasm for this new collaboration:
Polymarket’s decision to integrate Chainlink’s proven Oracle infrastructure is a crucial step that significantly improves the creation and operation of prediction markets. When market outcomes are determined by high-quality data and tamper-proof calculations from Oracle networks, prediction markets evolve into reliable, real-time signals that the world can trust. Polymarket’s partnership with Chainlink is a decisive step toward a world based on cryptographic truth.
While we have mentioned the strategic role of oracles, they are even more important for applications such as Polymarket, where the money at stake in bets leaves no room for error.
At the beginning of the summer, for example, a controversy erupted over a bet on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The bet sought to determine whether or not Zelensky would wear a suit at a NATO summit on June 24 in the Netherlands. While the UMA oracle settled on “no,” many observers believed that the Ukrainian president did indeed wear a suit.
To date, Chainlink remains by far the market leader in oracles, with more than 10 times the total value secured (TVS) of Pyth, its closest competitor. According to data from DefiLlama, the company has a TVS of $99.37 billion spread across 461 protocols:
For its part, the price of LINK stands at $23.41 at the time of writing, down 5.1% over 24 hours.
