Smart contract platform Zilliqa (ZIL) is the latest in the blockchain space to embrace the technology of decentralized oracle play Chainlink, which allows typically siloed smart contracts to interact with off-chain data.
Zilliqa’s builders announced the integration on July 31st, saying the meld has resulted from their team recently working with Chainlink’s to ensure a special adapter will successfully connect external data feeds to Zilliqa smart contracts.
The team-up comes as Zilliqa’s backers have been moving full steam ahead on making the platform a viable speedier alternative to older and more entrenched blockchain projects. The upstart platform’s mainnet first went live in January 2019.
On the news, Zilliqa chief scientific officer and president Amrit Kumar hailed the Chainlink collaboration as a means to accelerate the maturation of the smart contract platform’s ecosystem:
“As we continue to explore more solutions in the realm of decentralised finance, access to secure and reliable price feeds will be integral to the growing diversity of the Zilliqa ecosystem. We look forward to seeing exciting new applications on our network such as decentralised exchanges, trading platforms, and many other crypto-integrated financial services.”
Moreover, Chainlink international business development lead Dan Kochis said the new integration highlighted the decentralized oracle project’s mission to provide increased smart contract functionalities across the cryptoeconomy:
“Our recent mainnet launch showcased our capabilities in equipping Ethereum smart contracts with the ability to query market prices. After months of collaboration with the Zilliqa team, we are excited to expand our off-chain data query capabilities to yet another innovative trailblazer in the global blockchain ecosystem.”
Spreading the Word on .Zil Domains
On the same day as the Chainlink announcement, the Zilliqa Foundation revealed it would be working with software company Unstoppable Domains to start a $250,000 USD grant campaign to fund exchanges’ and wallets’ implementation of .zil domains — human-readable addresses that make cryptocurrency payments easier.
As part of the program, individual grants will go as high as $15,000, and two inaugural grantees have already been chosen: Singaporean crypto exchange Counter Network and crypto wallet Equal Tech.
As Unstoppable Domain chief executive officer Matthew Gould explained, the campaign was aimed at making cryptocurrencies more approachable in general:
“Imagine if all the major exchanges and wallets supported blockchain domains. This is a standard that any wallet or exchange in the world could adopt. Sending ETH? Send it to my .zil domain. Sending BTC? Send it to my same domain. This is what truly great user experience looks like.”
The grant program comes on the heels Unstoppable Domains auctioning off 60 major .zil domains last month. Some of the names that were up for grabs included bitcoin.zil, crypto.zil, and blockchain.zil.
The actual domains themselves went live on the Zilliqa mainnet on July 9th. A domain listing service, where users can exchange .zil domains, will be activated in early August.
Chainlink Keeps The Clout Coming
The Chainlink project and its associated LINK token have rapidly gained prominence in 2019 upon a series of notable developments.
On the technical front, Chainlink’s decentralized oracle middleware just launched on the Ethereum mainnet back in May.
Large enterprises have recently been exploring Chainlink’s possibilities, too. In June, the Google Cloud team released an article detailing how a combination of Google Cloud, Ethereum, and Chainlink could be leveraged to make so-called “hybrid cloud-blockchain applications.”
“Possible applications are innumerable,” the company’s developer advocate Allen Day wrote.
Days later, the startup-focused subsidiary of powerhouse software enterprise Oracle revealed at this summer’s CloudEXPO conference it was collaborating with the Chainlink team to help startups monetize APIs using the Oracle Blockchain Platform and Chainlink’s oracles.
Popular U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase also notably added support for the LINK token last month.