Originally Written: Early February 2021

2020 was a huge year for us at Chainlink, and 2021 is lined up to be even bigger. We’re getting so much done, and there’s so much more to be done.

Often, I struggle to take a step back and appreciate the cool things I work on before moving onto the next. This is because I absolutely love what I’m working on, and can’t wait for the next thing that comes up. But from experience, I know that this can lead to burnout. …

Recently, Patrick Collins and I entered into the EthGlobal hackathon and created Tweether, an on-chain governance protocol that anyone can use to submit and vote on tweets.

When we were planning the project, we split the work into two parts:

1. The governance protocol, for which I was responsible for.
2. And the oracle which would do the tweeting, which Patrick was in charge of.

The purpose of this article is to explain part one: the governance protocol. I’ll walk through the main concepts, the maths behind it, and how I got there.

The Premise

Tweether aims to be a platform that democratises tweeting…

The 18th of September was like any other day for the first few hours. Get up, have breakfast, check Twitter… wait, why is Uniswap trending? It didn’t take long to discover the reason for the explosion in Uniswap tweets was due to the sudden announcement of Uniswap’s own token: $UNI. Better yet, how it was being distributed.

400 $UNI tokens were distributed to every single address that had ever used the platform in any way, even if that consisted of a single (even failed!) transaction. Not only that, but there was extra handed out for long term liquidity providers.

Obviously…

The price of a LINK token has all but doubled in the past month, moving from around a steady $4 to a whopping $8 in a very short time. This is in no small part down to the Chainlink Oracle network, which provides a platform to call any external API from within smart contracts as well as a Verifiable Random Function for Solidity.

While both of these products are extremely powerful tools, they follow the Request & Receive cycle, which is not instantaneous. …

Editor’s note: This article is provided for entertainment and educational purposes only and is not intended as financial advice. Any investment actions taken related to or referencing this article are solely your own and by continuing to read this, you implicitly agree to such terms.

Prerequisite: This walkthrough assumes a basic understanding of JavaScript, Web3, and Ethereum smart contracts. By the end, you will be able to write a DApp that enables users to deposit assets to the Aave protocol, earning interest in the process, and subsequently redeem them at any point.

At the time of writing, the amount of…

Due to the nature of blockchain ecosystems, accessing off-chain data from on-chain smart contracts is not natively possible. However, Chainlink provides a platform for blockchain oracles, which are nodes on the network that act as a bridge between on-chain and off-chain data. Oracles enable smart contracts to retrieve data from the outside world.

Each oracle node can be configured to perform a wide range of tasks depending on the adapters it supports. Some of these adapters include HTTP GET, HTTP POST, JSON Parse, Multiply, and more.

How to Use Chainlink Oracles

Note: We’re using the Ropsten testnet in this example.

Let’s assume that we want…

Life is a balancing act. This applies to everything, especially when choosing who we share our lives with.

Our innermost thoughts are sacred to us, but we cannot burden ourselves with them alone. We are social by nature, and having people we trust around us helps us share these burdens.

Some share, with everyone, things which should only be shared with friends. Some are reluctant to share these things with even their closest friends.

We should aim to be neither of these people, for trusting everyone is as much a fault as trusting no one.

This logic can be applied…

Emotion and greed

Ponzi Schemes feed on primal human desires. We are all vulnerable.

Their purpose is to trick people into believing in their complex legitimacy until the perfect opportunity arises to cut and run. No schemer tells anyone how their scam truly works.

“A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investing scam promising high rates of return with little risk to investors. The Ponzi scheme generates returns for early investors by acquiring new investors. This is similar to a pyramid scheme in that both are based on using new investors’ funds to pay the earlier backers. Both Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes eventually…