Just a friendly technical analysis post. Take with a grain of salt, but on a fundamental level becoming a fiat gateway is massively bullish and crypto volatility only improves Binance’s earnings and future prospects.

https://coinstats.app/liveprices/binance-coin
Get everything you need to know about Binance Coin price and charts. All the latest updates and news for cryptocurrency on Coin Stats.

Necessary Disclaimer: no rule breaking intended. No price manipulation intended. I only want to share verifiable facts/links and my analysis. If I am doing anything against the rules please let me know and I will do my best to fix it ASAP. I trade crypto, including LINK, and I am currently short on LINK. This is not financial advice; this is just for my own record and to start a discussion for anyone who might want more transparency around LINK.

TL;DR:

I believe there is a lot of misinformation, uncertainty, and unanswered questions about the LINK token, the Chainlink ecosystem, the SmartContract parent company. I also believe that LINK's current price is unjustified based on fundamental factors like usage/business case/current customers/future potential. So I'm raising some points and asking some questions.
What is this post? Why should I care? How do I use it?
Read or skim it. It's about the LINK token, the Chainlink ecosystem, and the parent company SmartContract. It's about why I believe the price of the LINK token may be currently driven mostly by hype and not backed by standard market fundamentals like usage/economics.
Update 9 AUG: reorganizing, rewriting this post and moving supporting data/sources into "appendix" comments below on this post. The previous versions of this post and my comments elsewhere were too emotionally charged and caused more division rather than honest, evidence-based, productive discussion and I sincerely apologize for that. I have now rewritten it and will continue to update it.

PARTNERSHIPS

Who has Chainlink partnered with? Who is using Chainlink's technology and network? Who is contributing to developing Chainlink?
Google - this is the pinned tweet on Chainlink's official page. Nothing there about Google using Chainlink services or co-developing with them. Just that blockchains/oracles CAN use google cloud services (APIs?). This is Google Cloud's June 13, 2019 blog post: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/building-hybrid-blockchain-cloud-applications-with-ethereum-and-google-cloud
Oracle - (TODO. This seems to have potential as some product manager at Oracle has posted that chainlink integration is coming Q3/Q4 of 2020)
SWIFT - the best they've got is a 30 second video with NOBODY from SWIFT present, with a *hypothetical* use case using SWIFT API.
Intel This is the only google result for "chainlink site:intel.com", and it casually mentions that Intel's TEE (trusted execution environment) technology can be used to improve the security of oracles/blockchains. Nothing about Intel themselves using or developing with Chainlink. https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/articles/new-confidential-computing-solutions-emerge-on-the-hyperledger-avalon-trusted-compute.html
Another 240+ claimed project integrations:
[TODO] There are so many to keep track of. Every week or even more frequent is yet another integration *announcement*
Current DeFi usage: we've heard that Chainlink "secures" $1 billion in DeFi. But that's not in value locked: https://defipulse.com/ (LINK doesn't even appear on that list). That's just with DeFi data supposedly being priced using Chainlink nodes.
EG Synthetix:
https://blog.synthetix.io/chainlink-decentralizes-first-wave-of-synthetix-price-feeds/ yet where does Synthetix actually PAY to use an oracle? Not visible on-chain, maybe someone will find it.
https://defipulse.com/blog/3-defi-dapps-starting-2020-off-strong/ "... Chainlink's following includes partnerships big and small, including Intel and Google Cloud services" example of misleading/exaggerated partnership claims being circulated.

Chainlink's ROADMAP

Threshold signatures, staking, on-chain SLAs:
How real are these, is there a roadmap, how will this benefit users, is there any evidence of users currently *wanting* to use chainlink but needing these features and actively waiting for Chainlink to launch these?
Staking: for there to be a valid incentive for users to stake LINK, it has to return around 5% annually because anything substantially under that would have users putting their money elsewhere (https://www.stakingrewards.com/cryptoassets) (not counting speculative capital gains in terms of LINK's price, but price gain per token/coin applies to all other crypto projects as well).
Currently, for stakable cryptos, around 30-80% of their total supply is staked, and a good adjusted reward is on the order of 5% as well (some actually negative, some 10%+). The promise of staking incentivises people to buy and hold more LINK tokens (again, many other crypto projects have staking already live). That 5% reward will ultimately have to come from the customers who pay Chainlink oracle nodes to use their services, so it's an extra 5% fee for them. Of course, in the near future, the staking rewards *could* be subsidized by the founders' reserve wallets.
Threshold signatures: addressed below in a comment.
On-chain SLAs: [TODO]
Here's supposedly Chainlink's agile/project planning board. (TODO: verify that it is indeed Chainlink's, and then analyse it)
https://www.pivotaltracker.com/n/projects/2129823

LINK wallet addresses

As LINK is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, all its movements are visible, all the way from the genesis creation of 1,000,000,000 LINK tokens through to aggregator nodes through to cashing out on exchanges. Below are some examples and some reasons why this may be concerning to investors/holders of LINK.
This is one LINK address whale with over 6 million LINK. Looks like some of the funds end up on a Turkish exchange Paribu. https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xc6bed363b30df7f35b601a5547fe56cd31ec63da This wallet has moved out >200,000 LINK in the last 24 hours. Don't know where, go trace it.
Typical data provider example. Lots of named Chainlink oracle nodes pay this address: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x72f3dff4cd17816604dd2df6c2741e739484ca62 Usually 0.16 LINK to this address every few minutes, sometimes 2 LINK. This data provider has sent out ~11,620 LINK out to the following wallet: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xa5d0084a766203b463b3164dfc49d91509c12dab That wallet has cashed out 9,560 LINK to 1inch.exchange (a DEX) over the past year. Has also transferred 6000 LINK to a currently loaded wallet (possibly exchange account ready to sell?): https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x088d50c0bb5381a1205d1182cc21496c6fdc4c62 Another destination accumulation wallet (~493,000 LINK with no out transfers yet) https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x7758e507850da48cd47df1fb5f875c23e3340c50 (unrelated but a sell order of this size would drop LINK's price by 10-30% on Binance, someone check my maths on this) Now tracing back who funds the 0x72f3... data provider, we see a number of named Chainlink Aggregator nodes. Picking one at random, say the TUSD/ETH one: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x73ead35fd6a572ef763b13be65a9db96f7643577 It was last funded March 12 2020 with 5000 LINK. Tracing back the funds we ultimately come to the genesis wallet of the Chainlink network itself, the original source of the 1,000,000,000 LINK tokens in existence. (side note: some interesting-looking transactions there) This is the first child of the genesis wallet that received 100,000,000 from the genesis wallet. https://etherscan.io/tokentxns?a=0xf37c348b7d19b17b29cd5cfa64cfa48e2d6eb8db Last time this wallet transferred out was YESTERDAY for 500,000 LINK. Now this doesn't prove anything, DYOR, but to me it looks like the genesis wallets are slowly cashing out through the aggregator nodes, making it look like the oracle node network is being actively used (which it is, but it's not the end customers like AAVE/NEXO paying the LINK required to power oracles, it's SmartContract itself). I know that this is just ONE aggregator node, but I've seen the same behaviour from their other named nodes - go check for yourselves.
If you trace chainlink oracle funds to their source, you can find some of the original addresses. Some of these early on (around 1000 days ago) were linked to AfroDex labs, which looks like now doesn’t work. http://afrodex.net/#!/trade/AfroX-ETH
Who currently pays Chainlink nodes?
How much of the revenue that Chainlink nodes receive is from potentially third party customers vs internal funding by the Chainlink team wallets?
For example, this is the "Chainlink: LINK / USD Aggregator" wallet.
It has had a total 8,200 LINK deposited from 5 transactions in round amounts (on any of the below links, click the "Analytics" tab to see In/Out balance history), and has so far paid out ~5,156 LINK.
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x32dbd3214ac75223e27e575c53944307914f7a90
It typically pays ~10 wallets 0.16 Link each, a few times an hour, like so:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x02c595981b935a57cfbe6170656181faac9a16d7a33a123930a716c4abec615a ($45 in ETH fees to transfer $22 worth of LINK, sounds like a lot of overheads)
Where does this aggregator wallet get its LINK funding from?
From ONLY here: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x27158157136384c713bc09a0a7ae81c8391d7f11 (current net balance ~50,000 LINK, total ~5,000,000 million in and out)
Which in turn gets it from ONLY these three, in HUGE amounts:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xf37c348b7d19b17b29cd5cfa64cfa48e2d6eb8db (6,000,000 LINK)
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xaf40738c6f940519516e043f924b8d05fc0292b8 (just a jump address into the one above, only 3 total tx)
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x1f9e26f1c050b5c018ab0e66fcae8e4394eb0165 (147,000 LINK)
the 0x1f9e2... one got its funding from:

1. 6098.8 LINK from Binance about a year ago: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x161cdd891e04a77e0458a3ef65c563c4d2064cd6
2. 12,600,000 from the genesis wallet through one jump address https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xdad22a85ef8310ef582b70e4051e543f3153e11f
3. 13,000,000 from the 0xf37... wallet above

the 0xf37... in turn got its 50,000,000 (!) LINK from the genesis address which minted the original 1 billion tokens:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xf55037738604fddfc4043d12f25124e94d7d1780
So the 0x27158... wallet is basically a genesis wallet.
Now let's do the most popular feed on feeds.chain.link, the ETH/USD feed: https://feeds.chain.link/eth-usd, with a wallet address of: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xF79D6aFBb6dA890132F9D7c355e3015f15F3406F#tokenAnalytics
It was first funded in Jan 2020 and has been funded a total of 9 times for a total influx of 108,437.533 LINK, by:

1. "Chainlink: Deployer" 10 LINK: https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x6f61507f902e1c22bcd7aa2c0452cd2212009b61
2. The 0x27158... genesis-sourced wallet, 20,000 LINK
3. An intermediary/middle very active wallet (which is 99.998% funded by the 0x27158... genesis-sourced wallet), 52,000 LINK https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x2f0acb9c5dd2a3511bc1d9d67258e5c9434ba569
4. "Chainlink: Aggregator", 36,427.533 LINK, https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x79febf6b9f76853edbcbc913e6aae8232cfb9de9#tokenAnalytics

I manually traced EVERY single inbound transaction/source of funds for the above 4 (not counting #1 as 10 LINK is negligible). 2 & 3 are 99.99%+ genesis-funded, being ACTIVELY topped up by a genesis wallet, last tx 4 days ago, 500,000 LINK. #4 has been funded 36 times over the past year and a half (that's 36 manual exports and I did them all). They all come from the 0x27158..., 0x2f0acb..., and https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x1f9e26f1c050b5c018ab0e66fcae8e4394eb0165 (another address like the 0x2f0acb that I went through and checked EVERY SINGLE inbound source of funds, and it's also >99.9% genesis-funded - one tx from Binance for 6098 LINK out of a total ~6,560,000 inbound LINK from genesis wallets), and two other addresses linked to Binance (0x1b185c8611d157a67d9a9d5261b0d2bd52c0bb78, 10,000 LINK and 0x039ac18afe298747c51c85e7c8f0d67c327f3883, 1,000,000 LINK)
The 0x039ac... address funded the "Chainlink: Aggregator" address with 127,900 LINK, and the 0x1b185... with about ~9,600 LINK). So yes, it's technically possible that someone not related to Chainlink paid for the ETH / USD price feed because some funds do come from Binance. However, they only come from two distinct addresses. Surely for "240+" claimed partnerships, more than TWO would pay to use Chainlink's MOST POPULAR price feed? That is, unless they don't pay directly but to another address and then Chainlink covers this one from their own wallets. I will check if that's in line with Chainlink's whitepaper, but doesn't that throw doubt on the whole model of end-users paying to use oracles/aggregators, even if it's subsidized?
I provide you this much detail not to bore you but to show you that I went through BY HAND and checked every single source (detailed sources in Appendix B) of funds for the OFFICIAL, Chainlink-listed "ETH/USD" aggregator that's supposedly sponsored by 10 DeFi partners (Synthetix, LoopSpring, OpenLaw, 1inch, ParaSwap, MCDEX, FuturesSwap, DMM, Aave, The Force Protocol). Yet where are the transactions showing that those 10 partners have EVER paid for this ETH/USD oracle? Perhaps the data is there so what am I missing? This ETH/USD aggregator has transferred out ~76,000 LINK to I guess the data providers in increments of .33 LINK. It has 21 data providers responding. I will begin investigating the data providers themselves soon.
And those middle addresses like 0x1f9e26... and 0x2f0acb...? They have transferred out hundreds of thousands if not millions of LINK to exchanges. And that's just ONE price pair aggregator. Chainlink has around 40 of these (albeit this one's one of the more popular ones).
​
SNX / ETH aggregator is funded 100% by genesis-sourced wallets, only 3 inbound transactions:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xe23d1142de4e83c08bb048bcab54d50907390828
​
Some random examples (for later, ignore these for now) ***********
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x039ac18afe298747c51c85e7c8f0d67c327f3883 bought 1,000,000 LINK from Binance in Sept 12 & 15, 2019. (one of the possible funding sources for the ETH / USD aggregator example above)
This address got 500,000 LINK from 0x27158... and has distributed them into ~5-10,000 LINK wallets that haven't had any out transactions yet
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x5bcf3edc0bb7119e35f322ba40793b99d4620f1e
**************
Another example with an unnamed aggregator-node-like wallet that was only spun up 5 days ago, Aug 5:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x2cbfd29947f774b8cf338f776915e6fee052f236
It was funded 2,000 LINK SOLELY by the 0x27158... wallet and has so far paid out ~500 LINK in 0.43 LINK amounts to 9 wallets at a time. For example, this is one of the wallets it cashes out to:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x64fe692be4b42f4ac9d4617ab824e088350c11c2#tokenAnalytics
That wallet extremely consistently collects small amounts of LINK since Oct 2019. It must be a data provider because a lot of Chainlink named wallets pay it small amounts of LINK regularly. It has transferred out 20 times. The most recent transfer out:
https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0xc8c30fa803833dd1fd6dbcdd91ed0b301eff87cf which then immediately transferred to the named "1inch.exchange" wallet, so I assume this was a "cash-out" transaction. It has cashed out via this address a lot.
Granted, it also has transfer-out transactions that haven't (yet) ended up in an exchange wallet, eg https://etherscan.io/token/0x514910771af9ca656af840dff83e8264ecf986ca?a=0x88e5353a73f38f25a9611e6083de6f361f9b537b with a current balance of 3000 LINK. This could be a user's exchange wallet, ready to be sold, or could be something else. No way for me to tell as there are no out txs from it.

LINK overall transaction, volume, and tx fees

This is to understand how much $ moves through the LINK ecosystem through: nodes, data providers, reserve wallets, wallets linked to exchanges, others.
A typical aggregator node tx (payout?): https://etherscan.io/tx/0xef9e8e6dd94ebe9bbac8866f18c2ea0a07408ced1aa77fa04826043eaa55e772 This is their ETH/USD aggregator paying out 1 LINK to each of 21 addresses. Value of 21 LINK ~= $210. Total eth tx fees: .233 ETH (~$88.5, ~42% of the total tx value. If LINK was $4.2 instead of $10, the tx fees would be 100% of the value of the tx). Transactions like this happen every few minutes, and the payout amounts are most often 0.16, 0.66, 1.0, and 2.0 Link.
Chainlink’s node/job listing site, https://market.link, lists 86 nodes, 195 feeds, 801 jobs, ~1,080,000 job runs (I can’t tell if this is over the past 2 months or 1.5 years). Only 20 nodes have over 1000 job runs, and 62 nodes have ZERO runs. Usual job cost is listed as 0.1 link, but the overall payout to the nodes is 10-20 times this. The nodes then cash out usually through a few jump addresses to exchanges. Some quick maths: (being generous and assuming it’s 1mil jobs every 2 months = ~6mil link/year = $60,000,000 revenue a year. This is the most generous estimate towards link’s valuation I’ve found so far. If we ignore the below examples where on multi-node payouts the tx fees are more than the node revenue itself, then it’s almost in line with an over-valued (but real) big tech company.
For example, one of the latest CHF/USD job runs paid 0.1 LINK to 9 addresses (data providers?) - total $14.4 payout - and paid 0.065 ETH ($24.5) in fees. That’s a $10.1 LOSS on a $14.4 revenue: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa6351bab810b6864bfebb0f6e1e3bde3c8856f8aac3ba769dd2e6d1a39c0d23f
Linkpool’s (one of the biggest node operators) “ETH-USD CryptoCompare” job costs 0.1 link and has 33 runs in the past 24 hours (once every ~44min), total ~78,000 runs since May 30 2019 (once every ~8min). https://market.link/jobs/64bb0845-c4e1-4681-8853-0b5aa7366101/runs (PS cryptocompare has a free API that does this. Not sure why it costs $1 at current link prices to access an API once)

Token distribution:

Top 100 wallets (0.05% of ~186,000 total) hold 83% of tokens. 8 wallets each hold over 1% of total, 58 hold over 0.1%. Of these 58, 9 are named exchange/lending pool wallets.
For comparison, for Tether (TUSD), the top 100 wallets (0.006% of ~1,651,000 total) hold 35.9% of the supply. 3 addresses hold over 1% of the supply and 135 hold over 0.1%. Of these 135, at least 15 are named exchange/lending pool wallets.
LINK’s market cap is $3.5B (or $10B fully diluted, if we count the foundedev-controlled tokens, which we should as there's nothing preventing them from being moved at a moment's notice). Tether’s is $6.9B. Tether has 10 times more addresses and less distribution inequality. Both LINK and Tether are ERC20 tokens, and even if we temporarily ignore any arguments related to management/roadmap/teams etc, Tether has a clear, currently functional, single use case: keep 1 USDT = $1 USD by printing/burning USDT (and yet as of April 2019, only 74% of Tether's market cap is backed by real funds - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_(cryptocurrency))). Given that Chainlink's market cap is now 50% bigger than Tether's, surely by now there's AT LEAST one clear, currently functional use case for LINK? What is it? Can we *see* it happening on-chain?

Chainlink’s actual deliverable products

"What do I currently get for my money if I buy LINK 1) as an investor and 2) as a tech business/startup thinking of using oracles?”
Codebase (Chainlink’s github has around 140-200,000 lines of code (not counting html/css). What else is not counted in this? Town crier? Proprietary code that we don't know about yet? How much CODING has Chainlink done other than what's on github?
Current network of oracles - only ~20 active nodes - are there many more than the ones listed on market.link and reputation.link? If so, would be nice to know about these if we're allowed!
Documentation - they have what seems like detailed instructions on how to launch and use oracle nodes (and much more, I haven't investigated yet) (TODO this part more - what else do they offer to me as an end consumer, and eg as a tech startup needing oracle services that I can’t code myself?)

Network utilization statistics:

Etherscan.io allows csv export of the first 5000 txs from each day. From Jul 31 to Aug 6 2020, I thus downloaded 30,000 tx from midnight every day to an average of 7:10am (so 24 hour totals are 3.34x these numbers if we assume the same network utilization throughout the day).
(Summary of all LINK token activity on the ETH blockchain from 31.07 to 06.08, first 5000 txs of each day (30k total) shown Appendix A comment below this post.)
If we GENEROUSLY assume that EVERY SINGLE transaction under 10.0 LINK is ACTUAL chainlink nodes doing ACTUAL work, that’s still under 0.1% of the LINK network’s total volume being used for ACTUAL ecosystem functioning. The rest is speculation, trading, node funding by foundedev wallets, or dumping to exchanges (anything I missed?)
Assuming the above, the entire turnover of the actual LINK network is currently (18,422 LINK) * ($10/LINK) * (3.34 as etherscan.io’s data only gives first 5000 tx per day which averages to 7:10am) * (52 wk/year) = USD $31,995,329 turnover a year.
Note: the below paragraph is old analysis using traditional stock market Price/Earnings ratios which several users have now pointed out isn't really applicable in crypto. I leave it for the record. Assuming all of that is profit (which it’s not given tx fees at the very least), LINK would need a PE ratio (Price/Earnings) of 100 times to justify its current (undiluted) valuation of $3.5 billion of 300 if you count the other 65% of tokens that haven’t been dumped by the founders/devs yet. For comparison, common PE ratios are 32 (facebook), 29 (google), 37 (uber), 20 (twitter on a good year), 10 (good hedge fund returning 10% annual).

Thoughts on DeFi & yield-farming - [TODO]

Why would exchanges who do their due diligence list LINK, let alone at a leverage? 1) that's their business, they take a cut of every transaction, overhyped or not, 2) they're not safe from listing openly bearish tokens like EIDOS (troll token that incentivized users to make FAKE transactions, response to EOS) https://www.coindesk.com/defi-yield-farming-comp-token-explained
The current ANNUAL yield on liquidity/yield farming is something like 2% on STABLE tokens like USDC and TETHER which at least have most of their supply backed by real-world assets. If Chainlink LINK staking is to be successful, they'll have to achieve at LEAST that same 2% at end-state. IF LINK is in bubble territory and drops, that's a lot of years at 2% waiting to recoup losses.

SmartContract Team & Past Projects

Normally I don't like focussing on people because it leads too easily to ad-hominem attacks on personality rather than on technology/numbers as I've done above, but I came across this and didn't like what I saw.
Steve Ellis, SmartContract's current CTO, co-founded and worked in "Secure Asset Exchange" from 2014 to 2016. They developed the NXT blockchain, issued 1,000,000,000 NXT tokens (remind you of anything?), NXT was listed end of 2013 and saw 3 quick 500%-1000% pumps and subsequent dumps in early in mid 2014, and then declined to . SecureAE officially shut down in Jan 2016. Then at some point a company called Jelurida acquired the rights to NXT (presumably after SecureAE?), then during the 2017 altcoin craze NXT pumped 300 times to a market cap of $1.8 BILLION and then dumped back down 100 times and now it's a dead project with a market cap of $13 million.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveellis0606/
https://trade.secureae.com/
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/nxt/
https://www.jelurida.com/news/lawsuit-against-apollo-license-violations
As an investor or business owner, would you invest/hire a company whose co-founders/CTO's last project was a total flop with a price history chart that's textbook pump-and-dump behaviour? (and in this case, we KNOW the end result - 99% losses for investors) If you're Google/Oracle/SWIFT/Intel, would you partner with them?

Open questions for the Chainlink community and investors:

1. Network activity: Are there any other currently active chainlink nodes other than those listed on market.link and reputation.link? If so, is there a list of them with usage statistics? Do they use some other token than LINK and thus making simple analytics of the LINK ERC20 token not an accurate representation of Chainlink’s actual activity? If the nodes listed on the two sites above ARE currently the main nodes, then
2. PR, partnership announcements: Why is the google tweet still pinned to the top of Chainlink’s twitter? Due to the frequently circulated Chainlink promotion material (https://chainlinkecosystem.com/) that lists Google as one of the key partners, this tweet being pinned is potentially misleading as there isn't anything in there to merit calling Google a "collaborator" or "partner" - just that blockchains/oracles *can* use Google's APIs (but so can most software in the world). Is there something else going on with the SmartContract-Google relationship that warrants calling Google a partner that we're simply not aware of yet?
3. By buying LINK, what backs YOUR money: If you have bought and currently hold LINK tokens, how comfortable are you that the future promise of your investment growing is supported on verifiable business and technological grounds versus pure, parabolic hype? If after reading this post you still are, I kindly ask you to reply and show how even one of the points I provided is either incorrect or not applicable, and I will edit my post and include your feedback in the relevant section as I have already done from other users.
4. What have I missed? Of course not 100% of what I've said is infallible truth. I am a real human, and I have plenty of biases and blind spots. Even if what I've provided is technically correct, there may be other much more important info that I've missed that eclipses what I've provided here. Ask yourself: if the current hype around LINK is indeed valid and points to a $100/$1000 future LINK price, then Where’s Chainlink’s missing financial/performance/usage evidence to justify LINK’s current valuation of $10+?

Conclusion

For your consideration, I have provided evidence with links that you can follow and verify, and draw your own conclusions. I have made my case as to why I believe the LINK token is currently priced much higher than evidence supports, and I ask you to peer-review my analysis and share your thoughts with me and with the wider LINK/crypto community.
Thank you for your time, I realize this is a long post. All questions and feedback welcome, feel free to comment or PM. I won't delete/censoblock (except for personal threats, safety considerations etc). I am a real human but I am not revealing my true identity for obvious privacy/harassment reasons.
(If anyone is wondering about my credentials ability to add 2+2 and work with basic spreadsheets: I have previously won a math competition in a USA state, I won an English-speaking country's physics olympiad, my university education is in mathematical physics/optimization engineering, and I worked for a few years in a global manufacturing company doing data analytics, obviously I'm not posting my CV here to verify that but I promise you it's the truth)
I’m not looking to spread neither FUD, nor blind faith, nor pure hype, and I want an honest transparent objective discussion. I personally believe more that LINK is overvalued, but my beliefs have evolved and may continue to do so as I research more and understand more about Chainlink, LINK, Ethereum, DeFi, and other related topics, and as I incorporate YOUR feedback. If you think I haven't disclosed something, ask.
As always, this is not financial advice and I am not liable for anything that may happen as a result of you reading this!

What is Axion? Per Axion's website:

AXION is the answer to our global financial markets that are on the brink of disaster.
The original solution to this impending collapse was Bitcoin, a decentralized peer-to-peer currency. However, since its inception, certain aspects of Bitcoin, such as lack of speed and high fees, have shifted Bitcoin into more of a store-of-value than a currency. Axion is the currency to address that.
With a high-interest time-locked savings account, Participants in the Axion Network are rewarded daily.

• Fixed Inflation
• Fast
• Passive Income
• Rewards people, not the corporate elite
• Inexpensive
• Global & Scalable

How is AXION distributed?

Anyone holding Hex2T (pre-sale) tokens will receive AXION at a rate of 1:1

Hex holders will also receive AXION 1:1, limited at 10M AXION tokens. Hex holders will also be auto-locked for a year, with 2% releasing weekly. More details can be found in the whitepaper. If Hex holders do not claim their AXION tokens, they will become available for purchase in the Daily Auction every week.

The Daily Auction

Putting Tokens and Value into your pocket.

To get Axion, it needs to be claimed by Hex & Hex2T holders, the longer they wait to claim, the more penalties they face. About 2% of their total per week. This 2% is added into a daily auction pool where people can bid using ETH on the Axion tokens within it. If you bid 10% of the ETH on that day, you get 10% of the pool rewards.
80% of the ETH paid in the auction is then used to hyperdrive both the Axion token and the stakers earnings. First, the ETH is used to purchase the tokens, boosting the token price, and then those tokens are distributed to stakers, creating a very strong positive feedback loop.

Axion Vision

Axion is on the path to becoming the ideal global currency.

For the first time in history, inflation is increasing the purchasing power of the people within the network. Axion has partnerships lined up to be integrated in online and in-person payment solutions, where you can pay for nearly everything in your every-day life using Axion. The merchants can accept FIAT (converted from Axion), or Axion itself. This is a global movement.

Axion: Built to Scale

500 Billion Initial Total Supply
1:1 Freeclaim ratio for Hex2T and Hex holders
80% of ETH Earned in auctions is used to buy back tokens
8% Annual inflation that goes Directly to stakers
100% of all purchased tokens Are distributed to stakers
No Auto-Stake For hex2t holders 100% autostake for hex holders

How to buy:

**Video Tutorials:**Metamask Install – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htyEeKNHX5ABuy/Sell Axion (HEX2T) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYZBOkHIM5k
How Do I Buy Axion (HEX2T)?
Step One: Purchase Ethereum from your exchange of choice (Coinbase, Binance, etc). You can also purchase Ethereum through Metamask and have it sent directly to your Metamask wallet (More details on this in Step Three). If buying through Coinbase, you’ll have the option to use a linked bank account or a debit card. Funds purchased via linked bank account will have a hold period while the bank transaction clears, funds purchased via debit card will be available for use instantly.
Step Two: Install the Metamask desktop browser extension and set up your Ethereum Wallet. You may also install the Metamask app on your Android smartphone and follow the same set up process in the linked video. (Apologies iOS users, the iOS Metamask app has restrictions that disable necessary features, you’ll have to use the desktop browser extension)
Step Three: Once you have your Metamask wallet set up and your seed words properly saved, it’s time to deposit Ethereum to your wallet.
– If you’ve purchased Ethereum on an exchange such as Coinbase or Binance, you’ll have to copy your wallet address from Metamask and withdraw the Ethereum from the exchange to your Metamask wallet address that you just copied. Be sure to check the wallet address multiple times before sending as transactions can not be reversed.
– If you’d like to purchase Ethereum directly through Metamask, you can do so using the Wyre fiat gateway that is integrated into Metamask.
Step Four: Now that you have Ethereum in your Metamask wallet, you can head over to our listing on the Uniswap Exchange to purchase Axion (HEX2T). We recommend using Fast GAS to speed up your transactions. You may also have to click on the gear icon in the top right on Uniswap to adjust your slippage limit when buying larger amounts.
– If using the Metamask app on Android, you’ll have to access the in-app browser through the menu (three bars top left of app) and paste the provided link.
– You will see a “From” input that should have ETH as the selected currency pointing to a “To (estimated)” output that should have HEX2T as the selected currency. The “From” input is the amount of Ethereum you will be spending and the “To (estimated)” output is the amount of HEX2T that you will receive for that amount of Ethereum.
– Once you enter the amount of Ethereum you’d like to spend, the button at the bottom of the page should say “Approve”. This “Approve” function allows the exchange to access Ethereum in your wallet, which is necessary to complete this transaction. You’ll click the “Approve” button and the exchange will send a transaction to your wallet, which you will have to confirm. Wait for that Approve transaction to clear and once it does the button should change from “Approve” to “Swap”.
– Now that you’ve given the exchange permission to use the Ethereum in your wallet, you can click the “Swap” button. This will send another transaction to your wallet that you’ll have to confirm. Once that transaction clears, you’ll have successfully purchased HEX2T with Ethereum!
Side Note: If you can’t see the HEX2T that you’ve purchased in your Metamask wallet’s Asset list, you’ll have to add the token to your Asset list. At the bottom of the Asset list you will see an “Add Token” button, click on that and you’ll see a “Search” and a “Custom Token” tab. Click on the “Custom Token” tab and paste the following address (0xed1199093b1abd07a368dd1c0cdc77d8517ba2a0) into the “Custom Token Address” field, the rest of the info should auto-fill. Then click the “Next” button in the bottom right, and it should display your HEX2T balance, click the “Add Tokens” button and you should now see your HEX2T in your Asset list.
**How Do I Sell Axion (HEX2T)?**To sell Axion (HEX2T), you essentially do the inverse of what you did to purchase it.Step One: Head over to Uniswap Exchange and click on ETH in the “From” input, a drop down list will appear and you’ll select HEX2T. In the “To (estimated)” output, click on “Select a Token” and select ETH. To clarify, if you want to sell, HEX2T should be on top, ETH should be on bottom.
Step Two: Enter the amount of HEX2T you’d like to sell in the “From” input, the button at the bottom of the page should say “Approve”. This “Approve” function allows the exchange to access HEX2T in your wallet, which is necessary to complete this transaction. You’ll click the “Approve” button and the exchange will send a transaction to your wallet, which you will have to confirm. Wait for that Approve transaction to clear and once it does the button should change from “Approve” to “Swap”.
– Now that you’ve given the exchange permission to use the HEX2T in your wallet, you can click the “Swap” button. This will send another transaction to your wallet that you’ll have to confirm. Once that transaction clears, you’ll have successfully sold HEX2T for Ethereum!
If at any point you feel that you need help in this process, please do not hesitate to join our fast growing Discord or Telegram. Once you’re in either of those communities you’ll be able to ask an admin or moderator for assistance.
​

Legal

Their legal proposal is 95% complete, per their Discord announcement - and most likely be finished in the coming days.
​

Charts:

http://chartex.pro?symbol=UNISWAP:HEX2T/USD
https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/hex2t

According to the infamous Jeff K...

​

• "Axion is a currency that provides the most profitable (and sustainable) staking rewards that I have ever seen in crypto."
• "They have implemented a system where they will be doing potentially millions of dollars DAILY in token buybacks, which is legitimately going to continuously push the price up."
• "It's a decentralized ecosystem, where the community votes on governance."
• It's a currency where your purchasing power increases by simply being a part of the system, unlike FIAT, where a savings account won't even keep pace with inflation.
• "Axion took the Hex framework of Certificates of Deposit and made it better in every way."
• "The people who got in on June 3rd when I first called it are now up 100X 🔥"
• "Is it too late to get in? Not a chance."
• "Hex is currently at a 1.1 BILLION dollar marketcap, and Axion is only 20 Million marketcap, leaving another 55X or more to go."
• "People were already saying "I missed this" when Axion did a 3X.... This train is just getting started. Mainnet isn't even here yet."
• "To oversimplify, Axion is a massively improved fork of Hex. Hex has 1001 reasons why people call it a scam, Axion fixes all of these and then some more."
• "People are starting to notice this. In the last 7 days, Hex has gone down 30%, and Axion has gone up 80%. The next "pump wave" for Axion is now here, and the flippening is coming."

TLDR

​

• Axion is a currency that provides the most profitable (and sustainable) staking rewards that I have ever seen in crypto.
• They have implemented a system where they will be doing potentially millions of dollars DAILY in token buybacks, which is legitimately going to continuously push the price up.
• It's a decentralized ecosystem, where the community votes on governance.
• It's a currency where your purchasing power increases by simply being a part of the system, unlike FIAT, where a savings account won't even keep pace with inflation.

Axion WHITEPAPER

Hi, let me start by recognizing the following:
​

• There have already been several threads on VIDT on this sub
• The market cap is ~$15.5m, which is higher than most micro caps discussed (or spammed) here
• People often "shill" in this sub for quick-flip pump and dumps. This is not that kind of post and you won't see 4x returns in 8 hours

With that out of the way, I will try to briefly summarize why I (long time holder, DCA'd to the bottom, no intention of selling any time soon) believe this has a strong chance to become a Top 25 token, and why that push is already underway.
​

1. USP (basically the elevator pitch): VIDT validates and secures files/data on the blockchain, and does so via an easy to implement API solution. Businesses get the security and and immutability of blockchain without needing to dedicate tremendous time and resources for implementation. That's it. That's the elevator pitch. You can protect and verify data, invoices, files, certificates, etc. At first, it isn't the sexiest thing, because it isn't a chain itself, so there is no talk of ridiculous transaction speeds or unique consensus mechanisms, no technical jargon. But ask yourself: isn't that stuff antithetical to what blockchain really is about? Which leads to the second point.
2. The beauty is in the simple, elegant service. Due to the nature of what is offered, the oft-discussed pitfalls holding blockchain back from "mass adoption" are far less relevant: things like transaction speed, private key (mis)management, clunky UI, etc don't really apply to what is presently being done with VIDT. It is, in my opinion, one of the most business consumer-friendly, mass-adoptable tokens in all of crypto. That was another segue, because:
3. They already have clients who regularly use the service, like AmSpec (oil and gas), Airbus, Krohne, CMS Law, etc. These clients come from a broad spectrum of industries and have come to rely on VIDT for helping them to defend against fraud. The company has been in profit since 2019.
4. Interoperability - VIDT recently unveiled (out of nowhere, I might add) a new product called DataLink, which focuses on bridging data across all of the major cloud hosting services (AWS, Azure, Zap, etc) and major blockchains including Ethereum, DigiByte, LTO, Waves, Binance Chain, Hyperledger, and more to come. The significance of interoperability is probably clear to anyone who sees where blockchain is going, but to sum it up briefly: the odds of one chain ruling them all are very low, but for blockchain to really be mainstream we need to know that the various chains can "talk" to each other. We also need to make sure that off chain sources can easily communicate with on-chain services. Starting to get the picture? In pure and grounded business terms, we are likely to see most (if not all) of the major chains partner with VIDT as the service grows in popularity and scope. Oh hey, another transition...
5. Use cases are increasing in scope and ambition, and I absolutely love to see it. VIDT has several projects in the works that have the potential to fulfill a lot of the promise that was envisioned when blockchain started buzzing. IBM is pleased with the progress of their collaboration with VIDT for capturing environmental sensor data for their Internet of Environments initiative, and this is expected to expand significantly. The VIDT team have also partnered with DigiByte on the Veritas project, which is securing digital identities, particularly for social media. That twitter hack seems relevant, doesn't it? And one of my favorites: VIDT has partnered with Fantom on a project that aims to bring transparency and authenticity to the world of politics by working with the government of Afghanistan, an effort that has been hinted to have a much larger scope than meets the eye. And more scope means more verifications using VIDT, which means more tokens spent!
6. Tokenomics are among the best in all of crypto. Seriously. The total supply is under 60m, with just over 43m (75%) already in circulation. Clients pay a fixed fee in fiat, and tokens are used at the equivalent price. This means, of course, that more demand will put pressure on the token price. And yes, if the token price is higher than the fixed rate, less VIDT will be used per transaction, but at that point the number of transactions will likely greatly offset that. In addition, there are monthly token buybacks and burns. Yes, every month. It is a relatively scarce (by crypto terms) token that will literally increase in scarcity every single month, regardless of market conditions. The token is divisible by 18 decimal places, so the deflationary process can continue for a very, very long time.
7. The team is amazing. I saved this for last because as an investor, one of the key indicators in deciding whether something is worth putting my money in (potentially long term) is the team. And I will say it now, there is no team like the VIDT team. These guys are humble but hungry. VIDT is their passion. This is their baby. They communicate regularly via twitter and the official/news channel on Telegram, as well as on LinkedIn. You can see their faces, you know their names, they're in print, in videos, etc. Always meeting with potential clients, always building new functionality, always working hard. They have this energy because they know they're building something special.

Looking at all that I've written, I have to apologize because I really did try to make this a brief summary. I suppose I'll close with some scattered but bullish thoughts:
There have been roughly 6 straight weeks of news that coincides with one of the nicest looking charts I have seen: green on every timeline out to 1 year, all time high and price discovery seem to be within reach. The growth has been steady. Wallet count is over 6,000 and growing. And yet... it seems like most in the crypto space still either haven't heard of VIDT or still have yet to dive into the research. It's still not on any exchange bigger than Kucoin. It is already one of the tokens that sees the most use, and provides a bridge to blockchain for the outside world. Did I mention they certify diamonds now?
Considering all of the above (and much more, truly) and looking at some of the garbage that still sits above it in ranking, I really believe that this will be a Top 25 token before too long. The crypto world is starting to wake up to how big this token with a simple little elevator pitch could be, and the real marketwide FOMO doesn't begin until the big name "influencers" start talking about it. So with a $15.5 market cap this is still very much flying under the radar. Maybe the use case isn't sexy. Neither are "oracles," until you ask yourself how many companies could actually benefit from using them. That's the light bulb moment, and suddenly it all makes sense.
Thanks for your time, always be safe and do your own research.

When a thing is denied, something new starts at a higher level.
The update and iteration of the currency circle takes only a few days.
On August 13, Yam, the token of a popular DeFi project, plummeted by 98%, while YFI, another DeFi cryptocurrency, outran the digital currency Bitcoin Gold by value under capital operation.
According to their familiarity with DeFi, blockchain investors in 2020 can be divided into two categories. The "New" investors are active in DEXs such as UniSwap and Balancer, striving for hundredfold returns on investment amid fake projects, while the "old" investors stick to mainstream cryptocurrencies and advocate value investment in the three major CEXs.
Despite its long history, DEX did not prosper until recently. It has processed transactions of over US$520 million in the past 24 hours, and the trading volume for the past week has exceeded the figure across 2019.
But still, many people are stranger to DEX.
I. Will DEX shuffle the existing trading market?
Upon discovering something new, you can describe it, but never evaluate it superficially.
UniSwap occupies 55% of the entire DEX market. Celebrities in the circle enjoy discussing the changes brought by UniSwap on social media and how it will change the existing trading landscape.
On August 5, Jay, CEO of OKEX Exchange, publicly stated that "UniSwap can hardly replace the current mainstream exchanges." on Weibo.
He also listed two reasons:

1. With insufficient transaction depth, UniSwap cannot support large transactions;
   
2. UniSwap cannot set prices independently, but has to follow the prices set by other exchanges.
   

He also recognized UniSwap’s AMM model in the post.
Soon this post was criticized by Dovy, the founding partner of Primitive Ventures, to the effect that Jay had quite limited knowledge about DeFi and the reasons he proposed did not hold good.
She also mentioned the advantages of a new generation of DEX represented by UniSwap:
Traditional exchanges determine the price and market value according to a small number of chips in the market. By comparison, AMM relies on the entire LP pool to contribute liquidity, and a small number of chips will not lead to severe fluctuations in the price. The price follows the curve of the static liquidity pool within a time range, rather than the manually controlled order book.
2. Is UniSwap good enough to replace centralized exchanges?
Neither OK or Binance had expected that one day their arch rival was not each other, but the newly emerging decentralized exchanges.
With totally different operating methods and business models, DEX and CEX have their own merits.
CEX comes with evident problems. Ordinary users do not trust its security due to the rampant data cheating. For project developers, CEX requires high fees for token listing and maintenance.
The advantage of CEX lies in its low threshold and mature business model.
Just as Jay said, DEXs represented by UniSwap are still faced with great challenges posed by user habits. For example, UniSwap does not support limit orders or the candlestick chart, and users need to rely on a third-party Ethereum wallet for operation.
The innovative AMM model allows ordinary users and small market makers to get involved and earn market-making fees, reducing costs and improving liquidity.
According to the trading volume at this time, UniSwap may not be able to replace mainstream exchanges, but it is good enough to replace second and third-tier exchanges.
3. Is OneSwap an upgraded version or a copy of UniSwap?
"The success of UniSwap proves the necessity of the DEX that does not require permission and supports AMM in the market. However, UniSwap comes with two shortcomings. One is the lack of support for limit orders, which greatly restricts trading methods and liquidity; The other is the excessive transaction cost and poor transaction efficiency due to the limited processing capacity of Ethereum." - Yang Haipo
Recently, OneSwap, known as the upgraded version of UniSwap, announced that it will hit the market in early September, and has received an investment of US$10 million from CoinEX.
To develop an open-source centralized trading platform like OneSwap, it is easy to replicate the technique. But among so many Swap applications in the market, what advantages does OneSwap have over UniSwap?
1. Limit orders
Neither buyers or sellers of UniSwap can set prices independently; instead, they need to follow the prices set by other exchanges. If they want to buy tokens at a specific price, they have no choice but to wait till tokens at such a price appear in UniSwap, a waste of time.
Continuing the good practices of centralized exchanges, OneSwap supports the traditional order book based on rapid exchange, offering more flexible trading methods and further enhancing the liquidity of digital assets.
2. The candlestick chart and depth map
Without an order book, UniSwap has been criticized for its simple transaction interface which does not even contain the basic candlestick chart. As a result, it cannot satisfy numerous traders’ demand for data analysis.
To benchmark against the centralized exchange in terms of user experience, OneSwap has introduced functions such as the candlestick chart, order ticket, and depth map. Just like centralized exchanges with professional charts, OneSwap provided the price trend, trading volume, depth, and other information of different cryptocurrencies for users to set out informed trading plans.
3. Liquidity mining + transaction mining
UniSwap’s AMM model is believed to be a vital catalyst for its explosive growth. With an additional incentive mechanism of transaction mining besides liquidity mining, OneSwap leaves more core benefits to its users.
OneSwap will charge the Taker a fixed percentage of transaction fees based on the transaction amount, while the Maker does not need to pay. The transaction fees are divided into two parts: 60% for liquidity and 40% for the repurchase and burning of ONES. In transaction mining, both liquidity providers and traders will receive ONES as an economic incentive.
The market is looking forward to a new product that is as user-friendly as CEX and as safe as DEX. Is OneSwap qualified to meet such demands?

I’ve tried so many apps to get one that gets me a good chart of what’s happening in the markets and HODL is the only one I like. Binance, CoinMarketCap, Messari, and everyone else ..please look at the HODL chart and replicate that as HODL isn’t perfect (prices are a little delayed and some of the charts don’t work - right now it’s band) so would love to switch to another app.
So question for this group.. seriously how do you guys use the bar charts in all these other apps. Think the Messari one is the worst I’ve seen.
Ok rant over.