Ethereum was conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin. Additional founders of Ethereum included Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin. In 2014, development work commenced and was crowdfunded, and the network went live on 30 July 2015. The platform allows anyone to deploy permanent and immutable decentralized applications onto it, with which users can interact. Decentralized finance (DeFi) applications provide a broad array of financial services without the need for typical financial intermediaries like brokerages, exchanges, or banks, such as allowing cryptocurrency users to borrow against their holdings or lend them out for interest. Ethereum also allows for the creation and exchange of NFTs, which are non-interchangeable tokens connected to digital works of art or other real-world items and sold as unique digital property. Additionally, many other cryptocurrencies operate as ERC-20 tokens on top of the Ethereum blockchain and have utilized the platform for initial coin offerings.
Ethereum has started implementing a series of upgrades called Ethereum 2.0, which includes a transition to proof of stake and aims to increase transaction throughput using sharding.
Chainlink is the industry standard for building, accessing, and selling oracle services needed to power hybrid smart contracts on any blockchain. Chainlink oracle networks provide smart contracts with a way to reliably connect to any external API and leverage secure off-chain computations for enabling feature-rich applications. Chainlink currently secures tens of billions of dollars across DeFi, insurance, gaming, and other major industries, and offers global enterprises and leading data providers a universal gateway to all blockchains.
Learn more about Chainlink by visiting chain.link or reading the developer documentation at docs.chain.link
The Chainlink Labs Channel Partner strategy is intended to outline a joint approach between Chainlink Labs and select accelerators, launchpads, incubators, devshops, and software tools to promote the user adoption and growth of the web3 ecosystem. Chainlink Labs and the channel partners will collaborate to accelerate and nurture the web3 ecosystem in key areas including gameFi, NFTs, developers, and startups.
Chainlink Labs is the leading provider of secure and reliable open-source blockchain oracle solutions, enhancing smart contracts by connecting them to a wide range of off-chain data sources and computations, such as asset prices, web APIs, IoT devices, payment systems, and more. We are dedicated to the development and integration of Chainlink as the standard decentralized oracle framework used by smart contracts across any blockchain.
