Cardano Partners with Chainlink on Smart Contracts Development

IOHK, the tech team behind Cardano, announced during the just concluded Cardano Summit 2021 that it has formed a partnership with decentralized blockchain oracle network Chainlink Labs.

The objective is to allow developers to smoothly establish smart contracts by integrating Chainlink's oracles for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Developers can incorporate high-quality, tamper-proof external data with blockchains and execute digital agreements automatically under predetermined conditions.

IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson stated that oracles are critical for DeFi applications to thrive on the network since they create accessibility to real-world data.

He announced that Input-Output was "committed to providing developers with the most secure and robust tooling for building useful solutions on Cardano," adding that the integration of Chainlink's oracle was "an easy choice."

The partnership comes just a few days after the Alonzo network upgrade, which went live on September 12, 2021, when Cardano initially became compatible with smart contracts.

Reflecting on the partnership, the head of blockchain partnerships at Chainlink Labs, Niki Ariyasinghe, announced that the oracle network has a "tremendous amount of respect for the Cardano ecosystem," primarily the technical team responsible for the project as well as the synergetic nature of the community.

Ariyasinghe is convinced the timing is suitable for the collaboration given that smart contracts are only just being introduced to Cardano. At the same time, Chainlink facilitates the transmission of tamper-proof data from external sources to on-chain smart contracts.

"A lot of this comes down to timing. Cardano obviously has had an extended period where it had different drops of upgrades and the most recent is Alonzo – really about enabling smart contracts. So for us this is really like the right time to engage with the Cardano ecosystem," added Ariyasinghe.

He added that the integration could enable hundreds of billions of dollars of value locked to be secured on the Cardano Protocol, especially in the DeFi sector.

At the same time, Chainlink's co-founder Sergey Nazarov announced that developers creating DeFi applications on the Cardano network can "plug-and-play" price feeds into their smart contracts.

However, despite the gravity of the announcement, both Cardano and chainlink tokens failed to reciprocate. The lukewarm response may be due to market participants' anxiety concerning the effects of China's latest crackdown on digital assets.

Other Cardano Partnerships

Charles Hoskinson stated that the project had also collaborated with DISH's telecom services to enhance adoption for the blockchain while changing the general model of the telecom industry.

The project also announced that international land restoration and tree planting verification firm Veritree will now safeguard its records using Cardano's blockchain under a strategic partnership.

Cardano also unveiled other partnerships with companies such as the popular gaming and esports network, Rival, a fintech venture studio, as well as fund UBX and AID: Tech, a finance identity-based solution.