In order to further support the rapid growth of the Chainlink ecosystem, we’ve recently released the Chainlink Community Grant Program, as a means of providing important financial resources to the many development teams building Chainlink, as well as the many additional developer resources that enable easy access to the network. Our goal with the grant program is to deploy substantial financial resources, towards the creation of critical developer tooling, the addition of more high-quality data, and launching of key services around the Chainlink Network. We’re excited to begin announcing our awards of Chainlink Community Grants and encourage all the talented individual developers and development teams in our community to apply to the grant program here.

We are glad to announce that LinkPool, a leading provider of Chainlink network products and services, has been selected as a recipient of the Chainlink Community Grant Program. LinkPool is receiving a grant to fund improvements to the Chainlink Market—a resource hub for smart contract developers, data providers, and node operators to list and discover the necessary components to create next-generation smart contracts using the Chainlink Network.

The Chainlink Market provides smart contract developers with an easy method of finding, filtering, verifying, and selecting high-quality Chainlink node operators and services based on a variety of different parameters. This enables smart contracts developers and their users to more easily access important Chainlink information and participate in building the network. The Chainlink Market also creates a community-built resource that allows access to the decentralized Chainlink Network without any participation from the Chainlink team or documentation. Enabling smart contract developers to access and monitor the Chainlink Network from multiple independent resources is an important additional step in the decentralization of Chainlink’s overall resilience as a global public good for validated data.

Market.link has become an important resource for security reviewed nodes participating in Chainlink’s Price Reference Data Contracts to list themselves in a publicly accessible manner, separate from the feeds pages or any other Chainlink resources. This includes the feeds they support, total job runs, certification services, and much more. It serves as a great resource for DeFi developers who want to gain further insights into the node operators servicing their dApps. Additionally, there are numerous community nodes available to service job requests.

As a core function of the Chainlink ecosystem, they represent a shared community resource that deserves to be funded for the addition of new innovative features developed in an open-source manner through the Community Grant Program. Supporting great community resources such as the Chainlink Market aligns with the Community Grant Program’s goals of providing tools and services that will grow the Chainlink Network, DeFi ecosystem, and smart contract ecosystems across all blockchain environments.

Some of the expected improvements coming to the Chainlink Market as a result of the grant include:

• Giving more power to contract creators, allowing them to easily deploy new Chainlink oracle networks via an intuitive UI, while being able to easily select and compare the exact nodes and data sources that would best suit their specific use-case.
• Expanding the platform to allow other service providers, additional node operators and data providers the ability to offer their own products such as Node-as-a-Service directly through the Market, with an easy-to-use Chainlink-powered smart contract payment system.

“I’m thrilled that LinkPool has been selected as a recipient of the Chainlink Community Grant Program in order to further develop the Chainlink Market,” stated Jonny Huxtable, LinkPool Co-founder. “Over the past two and a half years, we’ve grown from what was a small hobbyist project to one of the leading providers of tools and services within the Chainlink ecosystem. This grant will allow us to expand the feature set of the Chainlink Market and improve the Chainlink Ecosystem as a whole, including exciting new tools to easily deploy Chainlink powered smart contracts.”

Through the Chainlink Community Grants program, we look forward to continuing to empower more and more Chainlink ecosystem teams who are building key tools and infrastructure that accelerate the development of universally connected smart contracts and secure oracle node infrastructure. We will continue supporting the community as a key driver of Chainlink’s rapid growth, because only together can we make universally connected smart contracts into the dominant form of digital agreement.

About the Chainlink Grant Program

If you want to learn more about the Grant Program, check out our recent blog post that further expands upon its goals and the criteria for submission. If you would like to participate in the Chainlink Grant Program, please apply here. Chainlink Community Grants are provided in Cash and/or LINK.

About LinkPool

LinkPool is a leading Chainlink node service provider with the goal of providing tools and services that benefit the Chainlink ecosystem. LinkPool’s aims include lowering the barrier to entry to staking on Chainlink nodes, easing the amount of technical experience required to run a Chainlink node and providing smart contract creators with the tools to easily search and identify Chainlink nodes that can suit their data requirements.

LinkPool achieves these goals by offering an easy to use and intuitive staking dApp, providing their node infrastructure through their node as a service and managed node offerings and with their industry first, Chainlink market.

LinkPool’s infrastructure products provide users an opportunity to join the Chainlink network by creating a node or trustlessly pooling assets. Enterprises, venture firms, and data providers rely on LinkPool’s best-in-class infrastructure, where reputation is built through optimal performance and uptime.