Data from Coingecko on the oracles of Chainlink

CoinGecko has announced that its data regarding the crypto market will soon be available on Chainlink. 

In this way, smart contracts hosted on the decentralised network can use that data for their operation. 

It is not yet clear when the CoinGecko data will be available on Chainlink’s oracles, but technical documentation is already available for use. 

CoinGecko is a platform that collects and provides a lot of data about cryptocurrencies and tokens traded on the market. It collects data from 373 exchanges related to the trading of more than 5,700 cryptocurrencies and tokens, as well as providing it via API. 

Thanks to Chainlink’s oracles, this data will also be available to smart contracts, so that it can be used as a source of information that can be processed by them. 

The oracles are defined as a middleware that connects real-world data with the blockchain. 

CoinGecko collects data from exchanges in the real world and makes it available to oracles so that they can provide them to smart contracts. 

Chainlink’s oracle network is decentralised, using multiple sources for the same data. In this way, it eliminates individual points of failure, thus maintaining the integrity of the oracles themselves. 

The data that will be made available by CoinGecko are those relating to the price, trading volumes and market capitalisation of the thousands of cryptocurrencies and tokens that the platform examines. 

Data on individual exchanges, such as the total trading volume on the exchange or the prices and trading volumes for each individual trading pair, will also be available. 

The Oraclize service

However, Chainlink is not the only existing blockchain oracle platform that smart contract developers can use. 

Another well known and widely used one is Provable, formerly known as Oraclize, which connects smart contracts of different blockchains with a multitude of APIs available on the web, thus enabling decentralised applications that can have a real impact on the real world.

They are two similar services, not incompatible with each other, that follow different approaches for the distribution of data on the blockchain. 

While Chainlink focuses on creating a protocol for data aggregation (the so-called “oracles network”), Provable operates a secure communication channel validated by cryptographic techniques.