Ontology Partners Chainlink to Leverage Smart Contract Functions
In a Medium post published on November 25, 2019, blockchain project Ontology announced that it had partnered with data-driven smart contracts platform Chainlink to leverage its distributed ledger technology-based (DLT) market offerings.
The Oracle Problem
Per sources close to the matter, the newly christened partnership will look to solve what the Ontology network calls the “oracle problem.”
According to the Medium post, the oracle problem that the two projects are looking to tackle has essentially to do with what the smart contracts can see and observe (user input), as well as the way it reacts to the given input (output). In a way, oracles have the power to not only see what actions the user performs but also has enough potential to influence their thoughts and actions.
The blog post reads in part:
“The oracle problem is centered around creating the same level of tamper-proof security for the off-chain connection that currently exists on the underlying blockchain. The reason being that a compromised oracle almost certainly means its connected smart contracts are equally compromised. As a result, a centralized oracle model can put the security of a smart contract in jeopardy because it negates the benefits of end-to-end decentralization.”
How to Solve the Oracle Problem?
Ontology claims that the partnership with Chainlink will effectively enable the Ontology ecosystem to create externally connected smart contracts. Chainlink will help Ontology by providing the latter’s smart contracts secure and reliable access to web APIs, enterprise systems, cloud providers, IoT devices, and payment systems.
Being one of the largest and most prominent decentralized oracle networks in existence, Chainlink also allows the flexibility to customize an oracle connection according to the user’s needs including making tweaks to the number of oracles, types, number of data sources, aggregation strategies, staking deposits, trusted execution environments, Mixicles, and more.
It’s worth noting that Ontology is not the first distributed ledger technology (DLT) project to have forged an alliance with Chainlink to circumvent common issues related to smart contracts.
As reported by BTCManager on June 6, 2019, blockchain project Harmony (ONE) had announced its partnership with Chainlink for similar benefits.
