Chainlink, while being a legitimate company, has not met the expectations of the DeFi community as a decentralized project. In their 2017 whitepaper, Chainlink committed to delivering a completely decentralized network of nodes to provide smart contracts with tamper-proof and decentralized data. However, after six years of development and utilizing their pre-minted token to finance their company, Chainlink Labs has not followed through on their promises.
Chainlink Labs has no intention of becoming a fully decentralized network and has instead whitelisted a few enterprise-grade nodes, the whitelisting process being opaque. Chainlink Labs maintains these nodes on behalf of the enterprises, and none of the nodes relaying data to smart contracts are independent entities; they are all in collusion with Chainlink Labs.
The opacity of the Chainlink network’s data source, along with the lack of independence of the nodes relaying the data, raises concerns regarding the security of the multisig, which has a poor rating of 4 out of 11. Entrusting our exchange to the hands of these 11 individuals is a significant risk.
Chainlink’s company has been opaque and has used their investors’ money for six years to finance an expensive talent acquisition strategy without delivering on their promises to their token holders. It is essential to note that as long as the Chainlink node operators remain whitelisted by Chainlink Labs, we remain at risk of Sybil attacks.
Furthermore, the Chainlink team has a history of selling their token to fund their company and enrich themselves. They have also been involved in illicit initiatives such as Celsius, Linkpool, Bancor, and colluded with FTX and Sam. In addition, Chainlink has had issues with price feeds reporting silver prices instead of gold in the past.
Based on the points mentioned above, it is strongly advised that GMX looks for a better solution than relying on a centralized oracle such as Chainlink.