Debunking the ‘Zeus Capital’ Disinformation Report on Chainlink

Claim #9: Secondary Provider This is another provable lie where no evidence is provided to back up its claim. The vast majority of DeFi projects that require oracles are utilizing Chainlink, with the next closest being Maker’s stagnating oracle network. Every other oracle project out there is either not yet live or doesn’t receive any in-production adoption. Chainlink not only has more users and secures more value on mainnet today than any other oracle network by a wide margin, but it’s also accelerating in adoption, which can’t be said about any of its competitors. There hasn’t been a single project who has ever stated that they were using Chainlink to “take advantage of Chainlink’s deep pockets” or anything similar. This claim has no proof and goes against public statements by paying users who have integrated Chainlink as their primary/sole oracle solution. It’s exemplified best in a recent blog post published by bZx, a margin trading DeFi protocol that integrated Chainlink, stating: Chainlink is the industry standard and most widely used oracle solution in the smart contract ecosystem; to say it is only a ‘secondary data provider’ is simply a lie. Claim #10: Economics and Competition This claim falls apart for the same reason as claim #7, Chainlink oracle networks are utilized and funded by numerous entities, where each new user lowers the cost for every existing and future user. After a data request is on-chain, any smart contract can query the Chainlink aggregator contract for its current value, only paying for the gas costs which are network dependent. Additionally, with Chainlink networks being subsidized to bootstrap the network during its early days, the costs are lowered even further (a key advantage of having a native network token). Chainlink oracle networks do not sacrifice on decentralization, transparency, or accuracy. Quality comes at a cost, and while there are cheaper options, every other oracle project makes serious trade-offs that put it at a disadvantage to Chainlink. Many other oracle networks only showcase lower costs by running a centralized operation, relying on on-chain data, or utilizing low-quality free APIs, all of which are subject to several severe attack vectors that put users’ funds at serious risk. There is no clearer evidence that these tradeoffs are important to dApp developers than Chainlink being the most used and fastest-growing oracle network in the market bar none. Chainlink is also clearly aware that it must lower costs while maintaining still core features, hence why it is set to launch the Flux Aggregator and Threshold Signatures. These two features will make it the cheapest oracle network to use in the market in addition to the shared cost model and all the other superior guarantees it provides. Other oracle projects are extremely unlikely to ever reach tech parity with Chainlink, as many are only applicable within DeFi while Chainlink is fully generalized and can be used far beyond just crypto price feeds. The network effects of Chainlink will be near impossible to contend with, especially considering all the other oracle networks mentioned run oracles as a secondary function of their protocol, whereas Chainlink is solely dedicated to oracles. Chainlink’s network effects on both usage, addressable market, and first-mover advantage are nearing a point of escape velocity. Let’s briefly examine some of the issues with the competitors mentioned above: MakerDAO’s oracles are highly opaque, where 75% of the whitelisted nodes are anonymous. Maker oracles’ data quality is vulnerable to volume shifts, especially in thinly traded markets, as nodes pull data from pre-selected exchanges. This is especially concerning given all the new collateral additions. Additionally, they only offer oracles for a few crypto price feeds and only have a handful of users, which appears to have stagnated in new adoption. Uniswap v1 is a highly insecure oracle solution, which has led to protocols getting oracle attacked and losing user funds. Uniswap v2 and it’s Time Weighted Average Price (TWAP) based oracle is set up in a manner where price accuracy is inversely correlated with tamper-resistance, meaning it’s hard to get both price accuracy and security. Additionally, Uniwap only supports price feeds for Ethereum tokens and the only known user is Augur, showing real limitations in network effects. Compound’s current oracle solution is centralized, completely under the control of the core team, and only used by Compound. They are working on an Open Oracle System which is designed to support signed price data (a feature Chainlink has supported since day one) taken directly from cryptocurrency exchanges, opening it up to similar attack vectors like Maker. Compound’s OOS is not live and does not have any planned users outside of Compound. Any oracle network you could ever desire can be built using the “toolbox of Chainlink.” There is no need for another oracle solution when Chainlink is already decentralized at both the node operator the data source level, connects to every blockchain imaginable, and offers connections to every off-chain service that exists today or into the future with modular and expandable external adapters. Anybody wanting additional security can use the Chainlink Meta Oracle. Claim #11: Team While credentials are important, the initial assumption of ‘professional experience’ being the main and only critical driver to success in a new industry is a bit misguided. New industries require pioneers, hence Vitalik didn’t have professional experience before he created Ethereum and many of the best blockchain developers are not always involved in the corporate professional world. Despite that, a quick look at the team and its advisors shows that the team is unparalleled in the blockchain space. The Chainlink co-founders have been studying and building externally-connected smart contracts and blockchain oracle technology since at least 2014 when SmartContract.com was launched (before the launch of Ethereum). The team has worked directly with top developers and enterprises who need blockchain oracles and has produced original research developments like TownCrier, Threshold signatures, Mixicles, and more. Chainlink’s 40+ person development team features seasoned experts in blockchains, oracles, cryptography, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and business development. Co-Founder Sergey Nazarov Started building smart contracts pre-Ethereum in 2014 Built the first widely used interface for DEXes Built the first blockchain-based email service Built the first centralized oracle service Last but not least, built the first decentralized oracle network CMO Adelyn Zhou Lead companies that have been acquired by Amazon Expert in applied artificial intelligence Best selling Amazon author Graduated from Harvard Business School. CTO Steve Ellis Worked previously a software engineer and team lead at Pivotal Labs Built mission-critical systems securing sensitive HIPAA compliant data and building scalable payments automation software. Oversees countless engineers and integration specialists who aid in the development and deployment of Chainlink oracle networks Additionally, they have a top tier list of business and technical advisors: Ari Juels Professor of Computer Science at the Jacobs Institute at Cornell Tech Former chief scientist of RSA Formalized Proof of Work consensus in 1999 (powers Bitcoin and Ethereum) Created Proof of Retrievability in 2014 (powers FileCoin and Sia) Co-author of the Chainlink whitepaper in 2017 and only works with Chainlink Co-author of the Mixicles whitepaper in 2019 Co-founder of The Initiative For CryptoCurrencies & Contracts (IC3) 36,000 total scholarly citations Tom Gonser Founder of DocuSign, the industry-leading e-signature provider in the world Joined as a business advisor to Chainlink in early 2019 Andrew Miller Decentralized consensus researcher Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Associate Director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3) Board member of the Zcash Foundation and Ethereum Enterprise Alliance Advisor to both Zcash and Tezos Evan Cheng Former Senior Manager at Apple Director of Engineering Blockchain at Facebook Co-creator of the LLVM, which generates the low-level machine code running every Apple device, as well as much of Google, Nvidia, and Intel Hudson Jameson Ethereum Core Dev and developer liaison at the Ethereum Foundation (the glue between Eth core devs and the community) These are just some of the many other highly experienced and knowledgeable engineers, business leaders, academics, and more that make up the Chainlink team. Chainlink is rapidly expanding too, with numerous job openings for integration engineers and software developers, further evidence of the growing demand for Chainlink. Dated image (thanks to Covid) but the team has been rapidly growing with top-tier expertsThe “focused on marketing” claim is ironic too, considering for the first year after their 2017 ICO Chainlink got mocked by many for its lack of advertising and community outreach as they put their head down and built the foundation of what would become the Chainlink network. This was in stark comparison to every other crypto project that was heavily promoting themselves and claiming it could solve the world’s problems. In fact, you will be lucky to find a single instance of the Founders or team talking about the token. Claim #12: Code Progress This is provably false as the SmartContract developers and other open source contributors have launched major changes and upgrades to the Chainlink repo on Github over time. Cosmetic changes exist but are only minor additions that pale in comparison to the technology being built. The team is working on numerous new innovative technologies in order to scale the Chainlink protocol, enable data privacy, and generate secure randomness. The first major development being worked on is Threshold Signatures, which will enable transaction batching within oracle networks and substantially reduce gas costs. This enables highly decentralized oracle networks that are economically and technologically feasible, allowing Chainlink oracle networks to secure more value in-production. The second major development is Mixicles (mixers + oracles), which provide smart contracts privacy for both the terms and outcomes of the financial instruments they execute. Additionally, this is done without expensive cryptography and can support rigorous regulatory and auditing requirements, all of which are a requirement for enterprise adoption of smart contracts. The last, but definitely not least major technological innovation being built is Chainlink VRF, a verifiable randomness function that gives smart contracts access to on-chain randomness that is tamper-resistant against miner attacks and fully verifiable by users. This will initially power blockchain gaming and NFT applications that need a secure source of RNG. PoolTogether and countless other blockchain gaming applications have already committed to using Chainlink VRF. Additionally, this work is being done in tandem with threshold signatures to solve data withholding attacks.