The L2 ZkSync blockchain becomes part of the Chainlink family and integrates “price feeds” on cryptocurrencies through the SCALE program.

The layer-2 solutions provider ZkSync is seeking to promote the expansion of its blockchain infrastructure: to do so, it has chosen to join the SCALE program of the Chainlink oracle by integrating the “price feeds” service that provides a secure and reliable source of data on the prices of the largest cryptocurrencies in the industry.

The SCALE program (Sustainable Chainlink Access for Layer 1 and 2 Enablement) allows applications and developing blockchains, such as ZkSync, to accelerate the innovation of smart contracts in their ecosystems, while benefiting from reduced or zero operational costs for a certain period of time.

When those projects that have used Chainlink services become more popular and generate stable economic income, they will be able to pay for the network operational costs of the oracles without heavily impacting the initial market launch phases.

This type of incentive has been designed to generate more economic value for each participant in web3 while at the same time transforming the entire stack towards a more sustainable model. 

ZkSync blockchain joins Chainlink’s SCALE program 

The second layer blockchain ZkSync has officially become part of the Chainlink family by joining the SCALE program (Sustainable Chainlink Access for Layer 1 and 2 Enablement), which encourages the development of dapps and infrastructures in the web3 world by offering a suite of low-cost oracle services.

The scaling solution developed by Matter Labs will now be able to integrate “Chainlink price feeds” which represent a reliable source for crypto price data feeds within the world of smart contracts.

In this way, applications developed on ZkSync, especially those in the DeFi sector, will be able to take advantage of more consistent and accurate data on cryptocurrencies, maximizing their potential and minimizing the risk of losing value during their operations.

We remind you that “price feeds” are essential in the context of decentralized finance because they allow applications to instantly retrieve the current or historical price of various cryptocurrencies or real-world assets while performing critical functions.

In the past, oracles with incorrect reference prices have caused several cryptographic projects to record losses of several million dollars

The operational costs necessary to cover the services of the Chainlink nodes are temporarily paid by the oracle itself, but they will be replenished as usual as soon as the ZkSync ecosystem becomes self-sufficient to cover these expenses directly from the fees collected from decentralized applications.

In this way, a sustainable blockchain landscape is promoted where L2 developers can benefit from better access to Chainlink’s web3 services. 

The SCALE program by Chainlink is part of a broader initiative called Chainlink Economics 2.0 that focuses on improving the services offered while reducing the operational costs of nodes, without burdening emerging blockchain projects.

Chainlink represents the leading oracle in the crypto industry, which with a wide variety of products developed for decentralized applications and infrastructures boasts a Transaction Value Enabled (TVE) of 9.2 trillion dollars from 2022 until today.

In an official statement, Marco Cora, Senior Vice President for Business and Operations at Matter Labs, stated that he is excited about joining SCALE and confident that this partnership can enable the platform to build real and successful use cases in the DeFi industry. These are his words:

“We are excited to see zkSync become part of Chainlink SCALE and contribute to promoting the long-term growth and sustainability of its network. Chainlink Price Feeds is a critical industry-standard infrastructure that offers wide-ranging benefits for both developers and users.”

On the other hand, Johann Eid, Chief Business Officer of Chainlink Labs, stated that: 

“By reducing the operational costs of Chainlink’s oracle nodes, zkSync can help ensure that projects have access to the industry-leading services needed to create highly scalable, feature-rich, and secure applications.”

Analysis of the price of crypto LINK

LINK is the reference crypto used to pay oracle nodes for the services provided and represents the reference currency for the entire Chainlink ecosystem.

Its tokenomics has been subject to criticism in the past due to its limited utility of the coin, now reinforced with staking v.02 and the SCALE and BUILD programs.

LINK was one of the first cryptocurrencies to explode during the 2020/2021 bull market, managing to go from just over one dollar to over 50 dollars in a very short time.

Today, after a long bear market that has also put a real institution of the blockchain world like Chainlink in difficulty, the cryptographic currency seems to have returned as the protagonist of the market.

From September 2023 until early November, LINK has recorded a price increase of about 170%, positioning itself as the 14th cryptocurrency in the Coinmarketcap ranking with a market capitalization of 7.9 billion dollars.

In the short term, we can observe how the last few days have marked a pause from the pre-Christmas rally of the currency, which is now leaning on the 50-day EMA daily, waiting for another bullish leg up.

The structure remains bullish despite the recent developments in price action it could reach $20 by the end of the year if the bullish sentiment remains confident.

In particular, once the threshold of $17 is exceeded, a pump towards $20 and beyond seems almost certain, with a small resistance to overcome in this path at around $19.

On the opposite side, a bearish break below $13 could send the crypto back towards $10, where it could consolidate before deciding where to move.

The market volumes remain positively high compared to the sideways phase that characterized the price action of LINK from June 2022 to September 2023.

For LINK it will now be very important to see how BTC will behave after the last drop from $44,000 and how the market dominance will evolve and what effects it will have on the world of altcoins.

High-cap coins like AVAX, ADA, SOL, BNB, ATOM, and many others have shown very positive performances in the last week, even despite BTC’s retracement, so it is possible to believe that the upward trend for LINK is not over yet.