Chainlink
About Chainlink
The price of Chainlink (LINK) is $10.52 today, as of Sep 16 08:24 p.m., with a 24-hour trading volume of $296.37M. Over the last 24 hours, the price has decreased by -5.02%. Chainlink currently has a circulating supply of 608.10M and a market cap of $6.40B.
Link is the native cryptocurrency of Chainlink: a software platform that connects blockchains with external data. It is known as an “oracle,” which in crypto jargon means technology that brings real-world data from an online source into a blockchain.
Link provides the main incentive mechanism for users to participate in Chainlink’s decentralized network of oracles. Link is an ERC-20 token based on the Ethereum blockchain. Unlike ether (the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum), link uses a type of proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol where participants have to run their own nodes and are required to provide data to smart contracts in order to receive link tokens as a reward. It’s not a case of simply depositing tokens and earning interest.
Because link is used both for the exchange of data services and for node validator staking, it is used both as a means of payment and as a work token. Additionally, link has a hard cap of 1 billion tokens that are distributed as rewards for the validation work of node operators.
One billion tokens were created during the token’s launch in September 2017. Some 35% were allocated to a public sale at a price of $0.09 - $0.11, raising $32 million.
The price never climbed higher than $1.30 for nearly two years after the token was launched. Then, in 2019, following a flurry of new partnerships with the likes of Google Cloud, Polygon Network and Reserve, link prices skyrocketed 489% to $5. Another string of partnerships announced in August 2020, including one with Provide, sent link’s price soaring over the $20 mark for the first time.
Between December 2020 and May 2021, link’s price rose more than sixfold and reached an all-time high of $52.88.