Skip to main content

MLB Team Washington Nationals Partners With Terra Blockchain Community, Ballpark Plans to Accept UST

On February 9, the American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C., the Washington Nationals, announced the team has partnered with Terra, the open-source blockchain platform and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The Washington Nationals detail that the team is a “leading innovator” and is “consistently introducing new technologies to enhance the fan experience.” Washington Nationals Ink Long-Term Deal With Terra Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Washington Nationals has partnered with the blockchain platform and DAO Terra, according to an announcement published by the team on Wednesday. The deal with Terra follows a slew of sports-related deals with crypto firms, but the MLB team will be the first to partner with an open-source blockchain project. In addition to the partnership, the algorithmic stablecoin UST that’s issued on the Terra blockchain will be “accepted as a payment method at Nationals Park as early as next season.” “The Nationals continue t...
Post a Comment

The Missing Link: How Chainlink’s Pallet Aims to Deliver Greater Informational Access

The Missing Link: How Chainlink’s Pallet Aims to Deliver Greater Informational Access

As demand for smart contracts climbs, Chainlink’s modular oracle for the Substrate framework aims to power developers and defi applications with trusted off-chain information and pricing data needed to attract projects to Polkadot and Kusama.

Blistering Growth in Defi and Smart Contracts Beckon New Layer of Trust

As the smart contract revolution continues to gain traction, the fissures and flaws in existing infrastructure that supports these transactional protocols are becoming more apparent. Among the chief issues facing smart contracts, costs and security are the main factors in the spotlight.

To continue growing and scaling these unique protocols while not only addressing the accompanying shortcomings, smart contracts will effectively need to be “smarter.” Yet, given blockchains’ validation constraints, which are intended to preserve stability and security, there is a barrier to off-chain information by design.

Concerning smart contracts, satisfying contractual conditions may depend on external data (like pricing for instance), which may not be available on the corresponding blockchain hosting the contract itself. Besides creating a unique headache for developers, it corresponding restricts the use cases of smart contracts.

Chainlink stepped in with one answer among the pioneering solutions after introducing “oracles” to the blockchain universe. The main idea behind oracles involves connecting trusted external data sources to smart contracts, providing the missing link between the onchain and offchain worlds.

Smart Contract Adoption Depends on Data Access & Availability

Just like an API can connect two separate systems and share information, Chainlink can connect smart contracts to external data sources in the same manner. Akin to the premise that centralized sources of information can have a slant or bias, the idea behind Chainlink is to decentralize information inputs and outputs. This helps maintain a commitment to building open-source resources for developers that a single, controlling entity can’t compromise.

One of the main applications of Chainlink is pricing information, especially in the realm of decentralized finance (defi) applications. Borrowing and lending protocols like Aave already pull their rate pricing information from Chainlink, helping inform decisions and smart contract conditions. The architecture of oracles is such that they effectively provide another layer on top of existing blockchains, meaning they don’t compromise the integrity or security of the first layer.

Still, the oracle has many more applications besides defi. It can pull all manner of information, including weather conditions, sports results, and economic data changes, to name a few. To power these protocols and ensure greater adoption, smart contract access to off-chain data resources will be paramount.

Since Chainlink’s oracle was launched on Ethereum in 2019, it has been a mainstay among popular defi projects. Now the oracle is being adapted for other blockchains as the project attempts to maintain its agnostic stance. The latest iteration, designed for Polkadot and Kusama’s Substrate development framework, will act slightly differently from earlier versions.

The Pallet Module

Unlike the Ethereum version of Chainlink, which has nodes that report price information, Kusama and Polkadot parachains can individually determine whether they want to embrace Chainlink pricing data. By including their specific module, termed a “pallet,” developers can effectively bridge the Chainlink data into their respective smart contract applications.

For Polkadot Defi projects like Acala, this means that their parachain can choose to incorporate the oracle in a modular fashion. Yet, parachain projects that don’t need access to the data won’t be required to integrate the module. By extension, this means they won’t need to allocate any blockchain resources to Chainlink.

As defi projects seek greener pastures for more affordable cost structures and scalability, Polkadot and Kusama’s Chainlink integration will make it even easier for smart contract developers to make the leap. Meanwhile, a great number of alternative oracle-centric projects like Band, DIA, API3 are competing with Chainlink to offer similar services.

How do you see the oracles’ off-chain information impacting smart contracts usage? Let us know in the comments section below.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MLB Team Washington Nationals Partners With Terra Blockchain Community, Ballpark Plans to Accept UST

On February 9, the American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C., the Washington Nationals, announced the team has partnered with Terra, the open-source blockchain platform and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The Washington Nationals detail that the team is a “leading innovator” and is “consistently introducing new technologies to enhance the fan experience.” Washington Nationals Ink Long-Term Deal With Terra Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Washington Nationals has partnered with the blockchain platform and DAO Terra, according to an announcement published by the team on Wednesday. The deal with Terra follows a slew of sports-related deals with crypto firms, but the MLB team will be the first to partner with an open-source blockchain project. In addition to the partnership, the algorithmic stablecoin UST that’s issued on the Terra blockchain will be “accepted as a payment method at Nationals Park as early as next season.” “The Nationals continue t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Year of sponsorships: Celebrities who embraced crypto in 2021

From Matt Damon appearing in a TV spot for Crypto.com to Kim Kardashian shilling EthereumMax, 2021 saw celebrities with higher profiles getting into crypto. Though the crypto space has seemingly moved beyond the endorsements many minor celebrities bestowed on token projects during the 2018 initial coin offering boom, its growing popularity and acceptance now has professional sports players, Hollywood elites and politicians backing major companies dealing with digital assets. In June 2021, Kim Kardashian promoted EthereumMax (EMAX) via an Instagram story shared with  her more than 200 million followers . The token, which was used as payment for online ticket purchases for some pay-per-view events, gained 116,000% in just one week following the celebrity’s activity before falling more than 99% and leaving many investors in the red. Kim Kardashian promoting EthereumMax on Instagram Stories, June 2021. Source: Instagram Though EthereumMax is somewhat of a cautionary tale for cry...
Post a Comment
Read more

Top 3 Rebase Token Markets Shudder — Stats Show TIME, OHM, BTRFLY Lost Billions Since All-Time Highs

While the crypto economy has shed more than 3% in fiat value during the last 24 hours dropping to $2.09 trillion, the top rebase tokens by market capitalization have seen significant losses this week. At the time of writing, the rebase token economy is valued at over $3.2 billion but has lost more than 10% in value during the last 24 hours. The largest rebase token economies such as Wonderland, Olympus, and Redacted Cartel have shed between 36% to 55% over the last week. Top 3 Rebase Token Protocols Shed Billions in Value Over the Last Week, Wonderland Down 87% Since High On the first day of November 2021, Bitcoin.com News took a deep dive into the Olympus DAO and the reserve-backed asset called OHM . Olympus is a decentralized finance (defi) project that is described as a rebase token and since Olympus started, a myriad of Olympus forks have been born. Essentially, rebase token protocols adjust the token supply in a periodic fashion or when the price fluctuates. Olympus was once ...
Post a Comment
Read more