If there might maybe be been one crypto govt who has been singularly fixated, from day one, on bringing your total global monetary blueprint onchain, or no longer it’s Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of the decentralized oracle network Chainlink.
This feature is a fraction of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2025 checklist.
Since Chainlink Labs used to be established in 2017, sure from the Chainlink protocol, Nazarov has consistently expanded the network’s scope from “factual an oracle” for decentralized finance (DeFi), to a mighty suite of instruments intended to vitality with regards to every corner of on-chain finance — from tokenization to deprave-chain connectivity to endeavor-grade files infrastructure.
“Chainlink enabled over $27 trillion in onchain transaction price and is powering over 70% of all DeFi and more than 80% on high chains love Ethereum. However the valid fulfillment used to be proving that developed tidy contracts can feature all the design through many chains and valid-world programs, reliably, at scale, and in production,” Nazarov told CoinDesk.
Earlier this yr, the 37-yr-frail entrepreneur Nazarov framed 2025 as the “final stage” of blockchain adoption, arguing that governments, banks and asset managers are starting up to invent a global monetary blueprint on the “Chainlink same outdated”: a framework for real files, interoperability and settlement all the design through chains.
As the yr comes to an cease, his prediction appears some distance less daring and lots nearer to reality. In 2025, Chainlink partnered with the who’s who of monetary giants, comparable to Swift, DTCC, and UBS and even the U.S. authorities to transfer all the issues from macroeconomic files to valid-world resources onto blockchains. Nazarov’s protocol grew to alter into the very valuable connective layer between the digital asset universe and the legacy finance world, bringing Chainlink that great nearer to its “endgame.”
Next yr, Nazarov sees rather more adoption by outmoded monetary institutions. “We’re about 30% of the methodology to global onchain adoption. In 2026, I demand that number to transfer meaningfully greater as institutions and DeFi finally feature in one unified atmosphere,” Nazarov acknowledged.
Unsurprisingly, Grayscale Look at no longer too prolonged ago described Chainlink as the “very valuable infrastructure” for tokenized finance, noting that the protocol’s LINK — the token with a market cap of nearly $10 billion — affords completely different exposure to crypto’s infrastructure layer for investors.
In 2023, CoinDesk known as Nazarov the man who can rock each a plaid shirt and a 3-fragment swimsuit, a metaphor for his feature bridging two worlds. In 2025, with Chainlink solidifying its feature as the serious “plumbing” for tokenized resources and corrupt-chain monetary infrastructure as each worlds converge, that symbolism feels rather more fair.
Sergey Nazarov is talking at CoinDesk’s upcoming Consensus 2026 conference in Miami next Would possibly most definitely additionally.
