why i started buying chainlink (LINK) again

Hey all,

This'll be a little spial about chainlink, my epiphany moment recently, and why I believe its a valuable addition to your portfolio as well.

So little backstory, I was lucky enough to be around in 2017-18, lucky enough to buy 2000 chainlink when the tokens were roughly @.20c or so. I hate to admit it but my luck kind of ran out there. I wasn't a bagholder when the google partnership dropped. wasn't a bagholder when it soared up to $40 in 2021.

To be fair on myself, back then, these tokens drew my attention probably due to good marketing, a nice coloured logo, and some interesting key-words in the description. I had no idea truly what capacity these project had on the world and on the broader global economy. I knew what an oracle was, but thats about the limit of my knowledge on the technology.

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https://miro.medium.com/v2/0*NvCgo19EB2oRgr_6.jpg

However, what I came to realise just recently, was how interoperable and useful this project can and probably will be. I thought to myself, yes we have this new brilliant technology of blockchains with 24/7 payment networks, smart contracts, decentralised lending and other web3 applications, but how do they bridge the use cases of these technologies into the greater tradfi world seamlessly... with less friction... and more importantly... how do you manage to find a practical incentive structure that will back all of its utility?

It seams like in a decentralised environment there is a huge struggle between incentives and costs. with any decentralised service you therefore need incentives for the validators to provide this service. Pretty simple. But you also need incentives for the users of the service to be willing to pay for it.

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SOLUTION -The answer i came to was actually pretty straight forward;

An oracle service can be ran by any corporation or financial service company, BUT, the service will require an upkeep. Computing space, engineering teams, security teams you name it. So unless some central body writes off the costs of this service and provides it, it may stand to make sense for a new solution to be formed. A solution where it is both cost competitive for users requiring an interoperable oracle, and attractive enough for validators to provide their services and run the network.

So these decentralised services, and decentralised oracles, that operate cross-chains and off-chains, may find themselves encouraged by centralised corporations and centralised tradfi institutions, because they will be wanting to shift those costs over to somebody else. And that someone else will be the collective. A decentralised collective of semi-anonymous, willing market participants and validator.

It seams almost a Darwinian advance in market structures, if you understand it you will realise that ultimately chainlink is a perfect example of a more incentivised business arrangement, where its a win win for tradfi and defi alike. The validators are incentivised to secure the network, the institutions are incentivised to offload business costs onto a trusted decentralised body. Validators earn income, institutions grow profit margins.

People may worry and wonder if the price of the token has any bearing on the cost effectiveness of CHAINLINK as a solution, well I believe that inherently it wouldn't. Purchasing the token and the desirability of the token will drive its price, sure, but the fees validators will charge will not remain the same amount of LINK tokens as it does forever, it will always come back to a base level agreed upon amount denominated in USD(fiat).

Link is one of those projects that I slept on, didn't really understand, but it just recently dawned on me how much utility this kind of solution will have in the next evolution of the economy. If anyone has an counter arguments, or pointers then shoot, i'd like to see what people think about all of this.