The fast-growing sector of decentralized finance (DeFi) is getting another boost as Chainlink’s price oracles today went live on the Solana blockchain.
Price oracles are considered a crucial part of the DeFi infrastructure as they help platforms to receive reference data, such as prices of various cryptocurrencies and tokens, in real time.
Decentralized finance, or “DeFi” for short, is a suite of blockchain-based financial services that replicate many of the most common offerings from traditional banks. That could be as simple as lending and borrowing or as complex as derivatives trading.
Chainlink’s oracles are already a common feature throughout the industry. Last week, for instance, Chainlink’s price oracles saw a similar integration with the Ethereum-based Fantom Network, albeit directly on the mainnet.
Still, Anatoly Yakovenko, Founder and CEO of Solana Labs, is confident that the latest integration with Solana will be especially beneficial.
“The combination of high-quality oracle infrastructure and Solana’s high-speed blockchain network can enable DeFi applications to scale to a global level,” he said.
While Chainlink’s price feeds are initially available on Solana Devnet—a sort of low-stakes test environment that allows anyone to try building on Solana, the developers say that the mainnet integration will be rolled out before the end of Q4 2021.
Solana takes on Ethereum
Sometimes called an “Ethereum Killer,” Solana is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain that offers low transaction fees and is capable of handling up to 65,000 transactions per second at peak times.
Thanks to the combination of these factors, Solana is gaining increasing popularity among both developers working on DeFi apps and artists creating crypto-collectibles in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
NFTs are tokenized representations of digital art, music, or even concert tickets. To get in on the growth in the niche, Solana launched a “Shopify for NFTs” platform called MetaPlex in June.
SOL, the platform’s native token, is currently the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to data from CoinGecko.
Last week, boosted by a string of positive news that included the launch of an NFT collection dubbed the “Degenerate Ape Academy,” the price of SOL hit a new all-time high of $81.25, per CoinGecko. Today, the cryptocurrency is trading hands at $67.57.
