Article

The Secret Sauce: Chainlink + Source

// September 14, 2023

Like any successful recipe, all parts must fit together — and build off of each other — to bring us to a practical (and delicious) end-state. Partnerships and their collective integrations of technologies and the carefully constructed frameworks that guide them are no different — though we wouldn't necessarily recommend attempting to consume your iPhone any time soon.

As recent joiners of Chainlink's storied BUILD program, we will integrate some of the key aspects (i.e., the ingredients we mentioned above) of their industry-leading oracles services, which will help accelerate the growth of our ecosystem and the long-term adoption of our decentralized data management infrastructure. In tandem, we commit to providing network fees and additional benefits of our network and its products to Chainlink's community and service providers, including stakers.

Sounds like a pretty delicious dish of decentralized data, no? Following an introduction — a welcome party of sorts — to Chainlink BUILD in mid-August, we're back on the blog to dig deeper into what this partnership means — and what it could mean for you (dapp developers) and your users. DefraDB & Chainlink: The First Step

So, how exactly will we accelerate the growth of our ecosystem while providing benefits to Chainlink and its users? When talking about Chainlink, access to industry-leading data feeds likely comes to mind, so a critical first step is enabling developers building with our stack to gain access to these coveted feeds directly within a database (i.e., DefraDB) so they can be used to build truly decentralized applications. Thus, the first step here is to build connectors to DefraDB, our peer-to-peer, decentralized, NoSQL database, for Chainlink, starting with data feed and adding additional services they provide.

Why is this key? This integration gives developers access to Chainlink services directly within DefraDB, dramatically simplifying the development process for anything requiring Chainlink services.

Example use case made possible by this process? Let's say you want to build a dynamicNFT that tracks how many points LeBron James scores in a season. In this scenario, developers could connect the NFT smart contract to DefraDB for not only its off-chain metadata management but the content-specific data updates of LeBron stats, unlocking an almost limitless customizations, gamification, and interactive NFT-owning experiences. To access the content-specific data needed by the dynamicNFT, all the developer has to do is call it from directly within DefraDB. More on this below.

DefraDB & Chainlink: Phase Two (Making Data Access Easy)

The second phase of our integration with Chainlink is to take advantage of Chainlink Function, a "web3 serverless developer platform that allows you to fetch any data from any API and run custom compute on Chainlink's highly secure and reliable network." This makes it easy for developers to make data accessible to Chainlink from their DefraDB nodes with granular controls depending on whether it’s user data that requires authorization or app data. Effectively, this enables any DefraDB node to become a data provider to the Chainlink Oracle network and monetize their data. Cha-ching.

What It Means for Users

DefraDB revolves around user-centricity and the ability to gain control over how your data is managed. For Chainlink, a connection to DefraDB enables them potential access to data from application users who, thanks to DefraDB, can grant access to Chainlink. For application users, this provides them peace of mind over preventing data violation and/or abuse, as they will always have control over their data when it's managed by our database. This freedom can unlock a world of data to be made available for Chainlink, which is impossible today as no database with granular user-centric ACPs (Access Control Policies) exist.

What It Means for Devs

Simply put, Source integrating with Chainlink eliminates the complexity of integrating Chainlink services for developers building with our stack. This simplification frees up developers' time to focus on building their products and delighting their users instead of burning time integrating with Chainlink services the traditional, often-complicated way. Deep exhale.

DefraDB & Chainlink: What’s Possible (Use Cases)

What other innovative, data-driven use cases can be brought to the table for users and developers by everything you just read above?

As mentioned above, dynamicNFTs, which rely massively on data, can have their evolving content managed to track — thanks to Chainlink's oracle services — real-time changes across finance, sports, insurance, and countless other sectors.

In DeFi, our collective technologies can be put to work across DEXes (with all the functionalities of a CEX) with decentralized order books and mobile applications powered by the Source Network stack and data feeds provided by Chainlink. You're welcome, degens.

In gaming, we (Source Network) provide the data management, interoperability, and user-centric controls, while Chainlink handles VFR (Verifiable Random Function).

In the supply chain, DefraDB can deploy on the loT sensors (pieces of hardware that detect changes in an environment and collect data) to provide cryptographic guarantees for the verifiability and security of data feeds to the Chainlink network without needing to rely on third-party intermediaries for this data, from Source straight to smart contract.

In the energy sector, we're working with SunSpec from the ever-relevant and exciting Distributed Energy Resource (DER) industry to secure the distributed energy grid devices and their data, which could be made available to Chainlink (following correct permissions from the DER owners, of course).

And this is just the beginning.

Sounds like the future, doesn't it? Overall, through our journey into the Chainlink BUILD, our technology can be used by the Chainlink ecosystem — from oracles to data providers, to provide end-to-end verifiability of data and its management. We can’t wait to share more and see you get involved.

As always, data to the people.

— Source Network

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