By CCN Markets: A little-known cryptocurrency spiked more than 60% after Google gave the project a surprise shout-out in an equally-unexpected blog post on how to use Ethereum and Google Cloud to build hybrid blockchain applications.
Google Sends Chainlike Cryptocurrency Into the Stratosphere
That cryptocurrency, Chainlink (LINK), enjoyed a parabolic swing that launched its price as high as $2.00 on Binance. Just hours earlier, LINK had traded below $1.10.
The Chainlink cryptocurrency spiked after Google showed how developers could use LINK to allow their Ethereum smart contracts to communicate with Google Cloud. | Source: TradingView
As of the time of writing, the Chainlink cryptocurrency was priced at $1.86 on Binance, which translates into a 24-hour gain of 62%.
That gives LINK a $619 million market cap, rocketing it to the 23rd spot in the market cap rankings and vaulting it past better-known crypto assets including Zcash and Dogecoin.
How to Use Chainlink to Connect Ethereum to Google Cloud
The cryptocurrency’s sudden rally began immediately after Google Cloud developer advocate Allen Day published a blog post demonstrating how developers could use Chainlink to enable Ethereum smart contracts to communicate with BigQuery, Google’s enterprise cloud data warehouse.
While BigQuery and Ethereum do the heavy lifting, Chainlink serves as critical “middleware” between other smart contracts and real-world data, allowing decentralized applications (dApps) to access off-chain inputs without having to rely on centralized “oracles.”
Chainlink allows blockchain applications to use data from off-chain inputs. | Source: Chainlink
Here’s how it works:
“To retrieve data from BigQuery, a Dapp invokes the Chainlink oracle contract and includes payment for the parameterized request to be serviced (e.g. gas price at a specified point in time). One or more Chainlink nodes are listening for these calls, and upon observing, one executes the requested job. External adapters are service-oriented modules that extend the capability of the Chainlink node to authenticated APIs, payment gateways, and external blockchains.”
After retrieving the data, the Chainlink node transmits it to the contract, which invokes the Ethereum dApp and triggers any corresponding events.
Google speculates that the BigQuery Chainlink oracle can be used for three major use cases: building reliable prediction markets (e.g., Augur), hedging against blockchain platform risk, and masking transaction data through “submarine sends.”
No Google Bump for Ethereum
The Google Cloud bump did little to move the Ethereum price, which traded in line with the overall cryptocurrency market. | Source: TradingView
Notably, Google’s foray into cryptocurrency development did little to move the needle for the Ethereum price, which remained little changed following the blog post’s publication.
There are likely two reasons for this. First, Ethereum has a $28 billion market cap and $255 million in “Real 10” volume, which dwarfs Chainlink’s $93 million in daily turnover. In other words, it’s much harder to trigger an Ethereum price rally.
Second, Google had already published datasets for Ethereum (along with several other large-cap blockchains), making its appearance in the Google Cloud application demo much less surprising.
The Ethereum price last traded at $260.38 for a daily increase of 1.28%.