Zac Brown

Metro Detroit native currently in Muskegon.
Salesforce Administrator
Frustrated Golfer

[Sergey Nazarov @SergeyNazarov]

Three key trends I am increasingly excited about...

1: Our industry has started caring much more about the security and reliability of the infrastructure, standards and oracles/dependencies that it is built on top of. This shift in focus towards security is already massively benefiting Chainlink because it is built with security and reliability in mind from the start e.g. 16 nodes vs 1 of 1 or 2 of 2 (which is actually often just a 1 of 1 in disguise). This focus on reliability and security makes a better system for everyone in the DeFi/TradFi industry to transact with less risk and also leads to more overall Chainlink adoption over time. The way Chainlink became the leading data oracle is through security and reliability, I think that will happen across all categories where Chainlink deploys services for the same reasons.

We are now clearly seeing this dynamic take place in cross-chain interoperability, with many large users migrating onto CCIP after conducting deeper security reviews of bridging providers, more and more of which are now being published, some telling quotes below:

https://t.co/7ANpmqIlPn
Kraken chose Chainlink CCIP because it offers enterprise-grade infrastructure with strict security & risk management requirements, including:

• ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 certifications
• Secure by default architecture
• 16 independent nodes
• Native rate limits, and more.

https://t.co/hPnqT7CFcT and https://t.co/QHXnyjO2fp
The analysis covers how Chainlink CCIP delivers strong decentralization, native safeguards, and issuer control as default protocol-level guarantees, which insulates wstETH from a number of attack vectors behind the Kelp / LayerZero exploit.

https://t.co/AObyg1Nunx
Chainlink CCIP has emerged as the standard in cross-chain infrastructure, providing an enterprise-grade framework to secure high-value assets

With over $4Billion migrated in just a few weeks and more on the way, I am clearly seeing the industry's clear preference for security and reliability being a key trend leading to accelerated adoption of Chainlink and CCIP.

2: Chainlink has always continued to build and added many of its best features during down markets, when there is less noise to distract top teams from building. Because Chainlink already has clear product market fit, being able to focus on building the future is a powerful accelerant for future progress and is actually what I and many of the people building Chainlink are here for.

I am very excited about both the use case specific features e.g. collateral management and the increasing number of reusable primitives e.g. verifiable confidential compute in CRE, which are now actively being built, refined and launched with top users. In my experience, during the down market lulls is when the best things get built, and I am truly thrilled to see Chainlink being built to better serve its existing users and entirely new users.

3: The RWA, TradFi Tokenization and Digital Assets industry has now decoupled from crypto prices as a determining factor of its success and is a rapidly growing market of its own. Great news for the technologies, standards and infrastructures that can serve this new and growing demand, of which Chainlink is at the very top of the list. By having the relevant certifications; https://t.co/PlGDKLrJDi, being the historically most secure/reliable option with the largest amount of value enabled and being able to compose multiple key primitives (Data + Interoperability + Identity/compliance + verifiable off-chain orchestration) into full end-to-end solutions like no other platform can, puts the Chainlink platform/ecosystem in a unique place to be adopted by this new and growing market.

This is now becoming increasingly clear in practice through Chainlink's adoption in various parts of the capital markets; from collateral management with some of the most recent examples being...

DTCC using CRE and Data for their production plans; https://t.co/IiXXFfUwJu + https://t.co/sHe6QvquYR

Data providers like SGX using DataLink for key data; https://t.co/P7uPeOzliY

Top asset managers like State Street; https://t.co/Jh08KBnCvN and Fidelity International; https://t.co/06noNUEbEt, being powered by Chainlink on the backend.

The above are just a small number of recent examples, with many more being worked on all across the TradFi ecosystem, from payments, to tokenized equities, to tokenized funds; all of these on-chain finance use cases need multiple Chainlink components working together.

I can't wait for the next stage, where the leading DeFi applications and the top TradFi institutions start interoperating through their use of shared on-chain standards, interoperability connections and data/identity oracles, all of which are being provided by Chainlink, together with existing infrastructures. Solving each of these market's individual problems is already exciting, but helping them merge into the new global financial system is something that I and many others in our ecosystem have been working towards for a while.

If the above sounds like something worth spending many late nights on, and you can see the future I am talking about, this is the best time to join a top team like Chainlink Labs... if you're the best of the best, excited about the future of the blockchain industry, DeFi, TradFi and building the future of the new global financial system, we are excited to work together with you: https://t.co/zhTgEzBUm0.

[Zach Rynes | CLG @ChainLinkGod]

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (@The_DTCC) is the most important company in the world that you have never heard of

They settle $4.7 quadrillion in securities transactions per year, making it by far the highest financial value processor in the world

They are the world’s largest securities depository and the primary infrastructure in the United States for clearing, settlement, and asset servicing

DTCC’s infrastructure covers equities, bonds, ETFs, treasuries, mutual funds, money market instruments, mortgage backed securities, and OTC derivatives

Their scale is incomparable:

✅ $114 trillion in assets under custody
✅ Serving issuers from 150+ countries
✅ 100+ million transactions processed every day
✅ Designated a Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU) by the U.S. government

Practically speaking, the DTCC is the plumbing that underpins the U.S. financial system (and by extension, the global financial system)

And today, the DTCC announced they are integrating @chainlink to advance 24/7 collateral mobility on the DTCC Collateral AppChain

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Today’s Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities - so long as they do it under the guise of “partisanship” rather than explicit “racial bias.” And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current Court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.

The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome. But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers - not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

[Chris Barrett @ChrisBarrett]

99% reliability is failure. At institutional scale, the 1% is measured in billions. Single points of failure are not acceptable infrastructure. They are accidents waiting to clear.

[Chris Barrett @ChrisBarrett]

Chainlink in DC

[Sergey Nazarov @SergeyNazarov]

Excited about the continued rollout of top institutional data on-chain via Chainlink; @sixgroup, the exchange of Switzerland has adopted @chainlink as the data standard it is using to get critical market data on-chain: https://t.co/GpQP6dnYnJ.

Chainlink is the global leader powering DeFi and TradFi RWAs, with this data helping increase institutional demand for both. This is now starting to be driven by TradFi users wanting their existing data sources on-chain as they move more capital into institutional grade RWAs, which require market data to function in similar ways to how DeFi couldn't operate without a reliable data layer like Chainlink. Below are just some more examples of top institutional grade data providers choosing to put their data on-chain via Chainlink as the leading data standard powering over 70% of DeFi globally, with it now becoming the data standard that their institutional users will be asking for in order to consider an RWA as reliable enough to put institutional capital into.

Also, being able to easily access key market data from CRE workflows should accelerate your speed of building a tokenized fund, tokenized equity, on-chain vault and many other on-chain financial products. If Chainlink is the place you can receive all your needed market data, reference data and identity data on-chain, that is just the first initial level of Chainlink integration for your RWAs. If you are then choosing to build your entire on-chain financial product via CRE because it can help you reliably create key conditional statements around the use of that data, with privacy and off-chain level compute scalability, that is a whole new level of Chainlink integration. The type of data listed below opens the door for DeFi, Prediction Markets, RWAs and many new categories of on-chain smart contracts to adopt Chainlink, but then once the full capabilities of reliable on-chain data are combined with CCIP cross-chain and CRE chain abstraction, that becomes a whole different level of orchestration, reliability and privacy.

S&P: https://t.co/6udBRjSzTU
FTSE Russell: https://t.co/gCpz6Eu99v
Tradeweb: https://t.co/d18kWaCifK
Deutsche Börse Group: https://t.co/KANxCI6uIF
Intercontinental Exchange: https://t.co/QWS7ETO9Kd
Coinbase: https://t.co/FS2MLqy4VB
Among many others....

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

It was inspiring to watch the Artemis II launch yesterday — @NASA’s first crewed mission around the moon since 1972. Our space program has always captured an essential part of what it means to reach beyond what we thought was possible, and I hope the four brave astronauts on this mission will inspire a new generation to follow in their footsteps.

[Israel Adesanya @stylebender]

❤️‍🩹
I know it’s hard on my people seeing me fall. I promise you it’s harder on me. Regardless, we respawn and go again. 🎲🎲

[Dan Carlin @dccommonsense]

What's so confusing to me in this debate whether Congress or the president should be the one who decides if we go to war is who in their right mind wants that in the hands of a single individual?ANY individual?!There's a reason the Founders didn't want that,and it's common sense.

[Tynamite ⬡KLG🐸🦆🦆🦆 @TheLinkening]

Chainlink is as much of a crypto as Amazon was a dot com or Google was a website.

[Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump]

Don't let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected--be careful Republicans!

[Sergey Nazarov @SergeyNazarov]

Cycles are a normal part of the crypto industry, what is important is what those cycles reveal about how far the industry has progressed and what next stage/trends of adoption/value creation will go on to define the industry.

So far this cycle reveals two key things for me:

Firstly, there have been no large risk management failures leading to large institutional failures or widespread systemic risks. In the previous cycle you had FTX and multiple lenders cleaned out through large price drops, this time around I am pleasantly surprised to see none of that or at least none of it at any system wide scale. If the crypto industry and its systems are able to successfully weather large drawdowns in price and liquidity issues then it is a more reliable place to put both retail/client capital and institutional capital. This time has been much better managed than last time.

Secondly, real world asset migration on-chain continues to accelerate regardless of Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency prices, signaling that having real world assets on-chain is not tightly coupled to crpytocurrency prices but provides its own unique value that can grow irrespective of market pricing of Bitcoin or other crypto assets. We have seen RWA issuance continue to grow and we've seen leading on-chain perp markets rival tradfi perp markets for very traditional commodities like silver, especially in periods when trading in permissioned traditional markets became harder or more risky vs trading in on-chain permissionless markets. As more and more RWA data goes on-chain to make perps work correctly for more asset types and as more on-chain value is generated as RWAs themselves, I expect these dynamics to only increase regardless of crypto prices.

These are both very positive signals for the assumptions I have been making about three key trends I am expecting to work together to reshape our industry in the next stage of its growth into mainstream adoption.

Firstly, on-chain perps about real world assets and tokenization of the assets on-chain has unique and durable long-term value which is growing regardless of any other dynamics. It is the value of 24/7/365 markets, on-chain collateral management and on-chain data.

Secondly, institutional adoption of our industry will be driven by the fundamental/technology value it provides, accelerated by access to permissionless/always on markets in DeFi, which will grow massively as a result.

Thirdly, the infrastructure that will make RWAs possible will be experiencing much more demand as more of the real world finds itself on-chain. As more RWAs have to go on-chain as perps via on-chan data or tokenization itself and as those RWAs are increasingly complex in how they need to work on-chain, more systems will need to interface with chains to enable those RWAs.

The first two trends are inevitable market forces that are now accelerating regardless of cryptocurrency prices, that is the real insight I see from this part of the cycle. The third trend is where Chainlink is providing the key global standards/protocols/infrastructure that is needed for providing the data, connectivity and orchestration that accelerates the first two trends.

Data is what allows most RWAs to exist on-chain at all. Market data for on-chain perps e.g. on-chain silver markets, Proof of Reserves for Stablecoins, NAV for Tokenized Funds to operate on-chain and many other examples touching every category of RWAs. Chainlink is the largest provider of data to the leading blockchains by far and is successfully servicing the vast majority of DeFi for all their data needs with 70%+ market share. Our new launches with leading institutional data providers like S&P, ICE and many others put Chainlink in a similar position in the growing institutional RWA world.

Connectivity to both other chains and existing backend/accounting/risk management systems is key for liquidity. The ability to connect to the other chains as a system of record/source of liquidity and to the existing centralized systems of record/sources of liquidity are key for scaling RWA adoption globally. Chainlink is the leading provider of these capabilities to institutions and has been chosen by the leading security teams in Web3 to be their official bridging provider due to a superior reliability/security track record. Chainlink is also the only system that successfully pulls TradFi payments into on-chain transactions across multiple chains, integrating existing sources of liquidity and new sources of liquidity into one interoperability layer.

Orchestration is the process of coordinating multiple systems into one workflow/transaction that defines the core value an application is providing to its users. Coordinating between multiple chains, multiple off-chain systems, multiple market data sources and now multiple AIs is a key function that some system needs to play for the more advanced RWAs to function properly. The Chainlink Runtime Environment seems to be the only environment in which you can currently run a workflow that can coordinate all of these key systems into a single application, already in use by enterprises and with advanced integrations into many key systems. Orchestration has an additional critical component of creating privacy, which there are now new and exciting solutions for being built on CRE. More to come on truly useful privacy as a key feature of CRE's orchestration.

If these trends continue I believe what I have been saying for years will happen; on-chain RWAs will surpass cryptocurrency in the total value in our industry and what our industry is about will fundamentally change. This shift will also lead to cryptocurrency's growth as an asset class that benefits from more capital on-chain, but RWAs is how all of this goes mainstream.

I have never been more excited about our industry's potential to become the way a better version of the global financial system works to benefit all of us.

[Dan Collins @DanCollins2011]

Spotted in Tel Aviv. Has some major security around him. I wonder who that could be.

[Overkill Trading @OverkillTrading]

Yellow arrows mark the bottoms for $LINK on this2 year chart.

This graph dates back to January 2024.

The bottom hit 3 times in 2 years at $8, $10, and $12🟢

Price currently sits at $10. This is the demand zone.

$30 was the 2 year high. No brainer for the Investing club.

[Swift @swiftcommunity]

This weekend marks a major milestone in payments: the coexistence period between MT and ISO 20022 message standards ends. From 22 November 2025, all FI-to-FI payment instruction messages will be delivered only in ISO 20022 format.

ISO 20022 brings richer data, better compliance, and improved automation - but preparation is key to avoid NAK’ed messages and operational delays.

Be prepared for the weekend.

All FIN and FINplus Users are strongly advised not to send any message from Saturday 15:00 GMT till Sunday 05:00 GMT and to check Swift Knowledge Base for full details, troubleshooting guides, and contingency processing information.

Find resources and support here: https://t.co/toQEO4G1gp

👉 Questions? Contact your account manager or visit the Swift KB articles for detailed guidance.

#ISO20022

[Chris Barrett @ChrisBarrett]

America will be the crypto capital of the world.

This is how it’ll happen

[Zac Brown @PCZacB]

@ChainlinkNFTHub Kinda interesting the current trendline price is following down intersects with the long term support trendline on November 22nd🤔

[Harry Papacharissiou @pappas9999]

Smartcon is all about merging the worlds of TradFi and onchain finance, so it felt right to spin modern remixes of classic house tracks.

[Chainlink @chainlink]

SERGEY NAZAROV SMARTCON 2025 KEYNOTE

The infrastructure to unify global finance is now live.

Today, @SergeyNazarov announced that the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) is live, marking the start of a new era in onchain development by enabling anyone to build institutional-grade smart contracts with data, interoperability, compliance, and privacy.

Sergey also announced Chainlink Confidential Compute, a technical breakthrough that unlocks previously-impossible onchain privacy use cases such as private transactions, privacy-preserving tokenization, confidential data distribution, and much more.

Together, these services expand the capabilities of the Chainlink platform to bring the world onchain: “At the end of the day, Chainlink is really the only system that can bring DeFi and TradFi together.”

Watch the full keynote now ↓

Full presentation slides here:
https://t.co/srhwU7J7A3

[BRAVE NEW CRYPTO WORLD @bncryptoworld]

This will go down in history as the Great Shakeout of 2025, and I'd like to offer some perspective, some positivity and hope for people in the crypto market here.

Lots of people are clearly hurting now, we've been delivered multiple punches recently and lots of people are showing signs of losing faith, some partially and some altogether. Losing money is painful and it is without doubt an emotional game.

Do bare in mind that everything is only ever a paper win or loss until you have actually sold.

The greatest victims in this market are those who think they can outsmart or guess where the market is going by leveraging and longing or shorting the market.

Trading with leverage in the crypto market is financial suicide - just stop it, it is the fastest way for people to destroy their chances within what is the greatest wealth accumulation opportunity of all time.

I have always remembered Raoul Pal's ( @RaoulGMI ) position on it, leveraging has always been a key part of his @RealVision's "Don't Fuck This Up" thesis, and today those words couldn't be more abundantly clear.

Lots of people are crying about market manipulation, yet they are out there placing leverage, long or short positions. Is this not a bit like playing poker and letting everyone know what your cards are before they lay their hands?

All we are doing here is allowing the exchanges, the market makers, the institutions and the whales to enter the market with far greater financial power to counter positions and liquidate them, which is what is repeatedly happening. I've no idea how people do not recognise this.

For everyone who are shouting the market is over, or are sitting there fearing as much, just take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

We are on the verge of a solid rate cutting cycle. Trillions of dollars of debt across the world needs to be refinanced. QT is about to end which will be followed buy QE, massive liquidity is going to be flooding in. The entire global monetary system is in the process of being migrated on-chain. No bear market has ever been born out of fear, it comes from peak euphoria, which we clearly haven't even touched. We have key regulatory acts that are on the cusp of being announced. Financial institutions are buying crypto. Actual countries are buying cryptos. ETF's are being approved. We are in the glorious position of being able to take part in what is the greatest financial revolution of all time - let that sink in.

The reality is the crypto space has never, ever looked this bullish before and what we are seeing now will go down as the greatest shakeout. Don't become a victim of it.

I have always said that the key to maximising the gains in this market is to buy solid utility projects with real fundamentals that will attract real adoption. Buy with conviction, hold and do nothing. Shut out the noise, and simply do nothing. It is also the key to riding the multiple drawdowns that are characteristic within every bull cycle, and now is no different.

Crypto isn't for the faint-hearted, you have to program yourself differently when navigating this market.

Those who overestimate their own intelligence, who are constantly buying in and selling out, changing lanes, thinking they can predict the market, taking long and short positions and chasing dick-driven greed through insane leveraging will invariably become the fallen soldiers of the market, and will ruin their chances in the greatest wealth accumulation opportunity of all time. And those who buy, hold, shut out the noise, and do nothing, will most likely achieve the success they set out to achieve.

I can't emphasise this enough but for anyone who is looking to educate themselves and to gain an advantage in navigating the crypto space, and who want to develop an understanding of the things that truly drives asset prices, take a look at joining Real Vision @RealVision, it is by far the best thing I ever did.

The team are incredible and it has a fantastic community for you to connect with. The information and insights they part with is pound-for-pound the most valuable alpha and intelligence that you could possibly absorb. The intelligence and understanding you will gain will help you to sail through these shit storms with a far greater calmness, to take a step back from the chaos and shut out the noise.

As always, stay calm and don't fuck this up.

Holders will outperform traders.