Chainlink announced that it has acquired DECO, a novel privacy-preserving oracle protocol from Cornell University which employs advanced cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs to provide enhanced privacy and security to its users.
Chainlink officially announced that they are thrilled with this recent acquisition.
We’re thrilled about our acquisition of DECO https://t.co/GMN1yFmPoM, enabling #Chainlink to put more high quality data on-chain, by combining ZKProofs with HTTPS/TLS to prove where data came from, and even verify the data itself, while maintaining privacy.
— Chainlink – Official Channel (@chainlink) August 29, 2020
The blockchain oracle solution DECO could fundamentally accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology in the corporate world. Moreover, DECO is also useful for users who want to monetize their own data without giving away any other information than the data they want to sell.
In DECO, anyone can serve as an oracle for any website and strong privacy from the oracle is guaranteed. Chainlink’s co-founder Sergey Nazarov clarified how this new protocol will work.
Any smart contract that was previously limited by private data will soon be able to function on a public blockchain like Ethereum without revealing any confidential information to the blockchain.
An oracle like DECO will enable a smart contract to query off-chain credit information such as banking records without overreaching into personal data. Additionally, it can prove that a person is over 18 years old just by pulling data and hiding the individual’s birth date.
Meanwhile, Chainlink’s network purpose model is to enable smart contracts to securely access external data sources in a decentralized manner. The platform provides data information for decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, including that of dYdX’s crypto derivative products.
We’ve launched a LINK-USD perpetual powered by @chainlink’s price oracle!
Trade $LINK now on a DEX with up to 8x leverage! https://t.co/p3QaVo9fv2
— Antonio Juliano (@AntonioMJuliano) August 25, 2020
Co-created by Dr. Ariel Juels, DECO is an advancement in how to utilize HTTPS/TLS, particularly for data transmission across the internet. Notably, Dr. Juels, alongside research partner Markus Jakobsson, coined the term Proof-of-Work (PoW), which is now used to secure more than $300B in cryptocurrency.
Dr. Juels will also be joining Chainlink as its Chief Scientist. He was formerly the Chief Scientist of RSA Security, a US-based company known for cybersecurity and digital risk management solutions.
