• Chainlink tokens surged Thursday as whales added to their holdings.
• The Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) was released this week and is now available on five testnets.
• Other oracle protocols such as Band Protocol, UMA and API3 also rose in value.
Chainlink Prices Surge as Whales Add to Holdings
Chainlink tokens surged Thursday following the release of the company’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). Wealthy investors swapped ether for link (LINK), pushing prices up 6% which extended weekly gains to over 25%. On-chain data shows some whales – or large holders of an asset – added upward of $6 million to their link holdings during the morning.
The Release of CCIP
The CCIP protocol is designed to help build cross-chain applications and services and went live for early access users on the Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism and Polygon blockchains this week. On Thursday, CCIP will become available to all developers across five testnets: Arbitrum Goerli, Avalanche Fuji, Ethereum Sepolia, Optimism Goerli and Polygon Mumbai.
Rise in Oracle Protocols
Prices of some other oracle protocols also rose, CoinGecko data shows . In the past 24 hours, Band Protocol’s BAND added 9% while Uma’s UMA and API3 both jumped 5.4%.
What are Oracles?
Oracles are blockchain-based services that fetch data from outside a blockchain. Blockchains are immutable stores of data but can’t verify the veracity of information themselves – oracle networks like Chainlink provide that service by referring multiple sources of information to provide reliable results.
Conclusion
Link prices increased significantly after whales added large amounts of LINK tokens following the release CCIP earlier this week; other oracle protocols such as Band Protocol, UMA and API3 also saw a rise in value due to increased demand for reliable blockchain information services provided by these networks