Chainlink: Why I’m Bullish
By: Fantom Hierophant
Tags: Cryptocurrency, Smart Contracts, Blockchain, Crypto, Investing

Sergey Nazarov, CEO Chainlink

I plan to do a write-up for several blockchain technologies that I find interesting, that I will be following over the course of 2021 and beyond. Obviously given my namesake, I am particular towards Fantom. However Chainlink is somewhat of an origin story for me so this is a soft spot. Buckle up for a long-winded story, I’m going to start with with a ‘diary’ post so skip ahead for the tech info & industry connections-

I was just tech-literate enough

to hear about Bitcoin when it was trading at around $300. I remember at the time Googling “Bitcoin Forum”, finding one and asking them: “How do I set up my computer to mine Bitcoin?” I got overwhelming replies of: “Just buy it dude. Don’t even bother trying to set up to mine it’s not worth it. Just buy it on the market and hold onto it.”

“Psh.” I thought. “Bitcoin is $300 I’m not just gonna buy some. I want to mine it and if these people wont help me, forget it.” And I did forget it. The Story picks back up years later, after the spectacle that was the ‘2016 Presidential Election’ for us Americans, I found myself on my usual prowl for ways to make money with “side hustles” online. I had some marketing and SEO forums I would frequent, but one day I happened to find myself exploring a place I had never been before. /Biz/

I was familiar with 4chan. I had frequented /b/ back when I was a young teenager, huddled around a glowing screen with friends late on weekends, laughing and recoiling at the humor and horrors that lie behind 4Chan’s ‘Random’ board calling Gamestops to inquire about Battletoads, but I had never really ventured outside of /b/ and especially didn’t realize they had a “Business and Finance” section of 4chan. I was interested in entrepreneurship, and was curious as to what insight these people might have. As it turns out, /biz/ once was actually a place to discuss drop-shipping and SEO marketing and other ways to earn money, but by the time that I had stumbled upon it in the August / September of 2017 it was wall to wall cryptocurrency mania madness.

They had quickly convinced me that the previous batch of folk who told me to “Just buy Bitcoin” when it was $300 were right

It was apparent I had missed a serious opportunity, and I would not make the same mistake a second time. I immediately FOMO’d and threw money into Bitcoin, as well as several meme tokens I was shilled. DOGE, BITBEANS, ZEC, VERT. “Moon mission, FOMO, FUD, Marketcap, Shitcoin, ICO, Whitepaper, cold wallet, hot wallet, exchanges, DEX, tokens, ERC20, SATS.” There was a whole new universe of lingo to try and understand, and to work I went. After a couple days of Googling, and just observing / listening I had started to pick up on what the fuck was going on in this confusing maelstrom of chaos, shitcoins, bagholders, shillers, pumpers & dumpers, scammers, and genuine bros.

A life changing post

I came across a post that had directed me towards Chainlink. It had just finished it’s ICO and had hit ETHDELTA a day or two before, and they had posted a bit of reading for people to do their own research into why it was worth a bother. I am a bit of a laser-focused individual with obsessive tendencies, that can border on manic. I began digging. There was the SIBOS connection- I had never heard of SIBOS before in my life if I was being honest, but an evening of Googling had me realizing they were serious players in the financial industry, and to have a blockchain tech demo there was absolutely massive. I took everything I had at time in crypto (a whopping $200) and went over to ETHDELTA and bought as much Chainlink as it could afford me. I think it was $0.19 at the time so I had about a 1,000 Chainlink, give or take.

A Javascript injector link

My pain

I’m by no means a wealthy man. I’ve basically worked entry-level jobs my whole life and, I come from a family that isn’t living paycheck to paycheck, but we weren’t taking any nice vacations. White bread served my family as everything from hotdog buns to garlic bread when seasoned and toasted. I don’t come from a lot of money per say, but I recognize I’ve had it a lot more comfy than a majority of people on the planet. One Day on /biz/ I found myself going to a URL that looked like a tumblr url about Chainlink, and it immediately redirected my browser to ETHDELTA and I closed the webpage but it was already too late.

Somehow the individual had managed to put a javascript injector into the URL and it redirected to ETHDELTA and scanned for private keys. At the time I had no idea about OPSEC and I had left my open private keys on my browser history and this URL was able to grab them and before I knew what was happening my precious Chainlink was being sent to another wallet that I did not own. I was just digitally robbed by a Tumblr link. What the fuck? It was everything I could have afforded to put into crypto at the time over the course of a month of paychecks. I was prepared to quit crypto in a fit of despair.

Somebody asked me to message them privately and provide proof of my situation, and I did such. Without hesitation he sent me $200. Not life changing money financially, but the emotional / mental impact of a totally random stranger sending me $200 like it was nothing, right after a different total random stranger robbed me, was profound.

Crypto was turning out to be a wild ride, (I hope you’re a millionare by now Videobro.) You restored my faith and saved me from wanting to just walk away from crypto broken and defeated. I hope to pay forward some day, the favor you did me those years ago.

I remember staying up late nights, watching videos of Sergey speaking anywhere I could find it. Sergey in 2014 talking about smart contracts as ceo of NXT (Video) Sergey giving talks at a Bitcoin dev seminar (Video). Reading everything I could get my hands on related to Chainlink, who they were working with, who was talking about them, what they were looking to do, what they had already done, I was obsessed.

So.. What is Chainlink?

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

Klaus Martin Schwab, a German engineer and economist best known as the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, published a book in 2017 titled ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ where he specifically mentions on page 248, by name, “Smartcontracts.com”