- The beta version of Chainlink Functions launched is said to be a huge step towards the creation of a decentralized computing marketplace.
- This new tool has an extensive benefits including trust-minimized security, self-service in minutes, serverless runtown environment, etc.
Chainlink (LINK) has an unwavering plan of creating a decentralized computing marketplace where developers can build a verifiable application by combining various functionalities. To take a step towards realizing this vision, the team introduced the beta version of a tool called Chainlink Functions to enable developers to use a single Oracle Network for data configuration and computation.
Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov explained how Chainlink Functions addresses a long-standing problem that has affected how developers define what a network does.
Developers have to define what a network does. It couldn’t do just data configuration or computation, it could just do one or the other. With Functions, you no longer need to make these two networks. Both these things can now work together in a network and you can build it in an hour instead of days.
Previously, developers could not connect their smart contracts to existing Web2 APIs to access messaging services, AI computations, social media signals, etc. The effort to leverage Web2 infrastructure when building Web3 apps was almost impossible until the introduction of Chainlink Functions.
The new tool solves this issue by easily connecting Web2 APIs and cloud services in their smart contracts. This has been proven by the collaboration of leading Web2 platforms including AWS, Meta, and Google Cloud. Several projects are also testing it across different Web3 areas.
Some Known Benefits of Chainlink Functions
According to Chainlink’s blog post, developers just have to define the external data source they want to access. Not just that. They would have to define how digital points should be transformed and how the outputs should be delivered. For now, the beta version of Chainlink Functions is live on Ethereum Sepolia and Polygon Mumbai testnets.
The benefits of this new tool include extensive connectivity, customizable computation, trust-minimized security, self-service in minutes, and a serverless runtown environment. It is important to note that hosting and running external adapters for custom off-chain computation is no longer important.
Developers can just focus on their decentralized applications—leaving the connectivity, security, and reliability to the Chainlink Network, the blockchain industry’s most time-tested infrastructure for Oracle connectivity and computation. Furthermore, Chainlink Functions is a truly self-serve platform, meaning developers can fulfill their external data and compute needs without having to interface with Chainlink Labs or Chainlink node operators.
Other specialized tools from Chainlink are the Chainlink Automation and its data streaming service. Nazarov spoke about them.
Data streams are a very efficient specialized tool for derivatives. That’s basically low-latency data. And that’s something that has now gone live on to production with the first big user of data streams, GMX.
According to him, Chainlink Automation is focused on triggering things on-chain. Using this tool, a smart contract could be triggered every two hours. In this case, developers can customize logic with a significant reduction in gas cost.
This development could accelerate Link adoption and contribute to the price surge of the native token (LINK) since there are about 30 million total developers in the world. Link has a bullish current market sentiment and is trading at $7.74 as of press time.
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