/biz/ - Business & Finance

>>4109602
Aeternity's a completely new blockchain that would need wide adoption to be useful in the first place, while ChainLink is merely a protocol that can work on any blockchain. But that's looking a bit too forward because realistically ChainLink is bound to Ethereum right now, seeing as Ethereum is the definitive smart contract platform and the LINK token itself relies on the Ethereum blockchain.

ChainLink's oracle protocol is also more robust, using several oracles at once (user-specified quanity AND user-chosen) and aggregating their answers using a function that does not reveal the answer of the oracle to any other, thus there is no way to "me too" someone you trust to piggyback on their success; a centralizing force if allowed to happen unpunished. Aeternity has one oracle commit to an answer, publish it to the blockchain, then let anyone else object to it by staking as much as the first oracle. The answer is assumed correct if there are no objections. In the case of objections, the correct answer is then decided upon by the blockchain's consensus.

Aeternity oracles define a question they can answer and will only answer in "true" or "false". ChainLink allows you to directly link APIs and any other data you have access to, and anyone else can participate by scraping that same data and joining the pool of oracles that provide it. The example presented at SIBOS of ChainLink - averaging the interest rates of multiple banks, calculating a market rate based on them, and finally executing a bond payment based on that rate, would be impossible using Aeternity's blockchain. That last part - executing an external bond payment - is especially challenging because Aeternity only defines one-way communication. Its oracles only answer true/false questions. Of course, an oracle could do whatever it wants off-chain and use the question as the trigger for that, but you give up the trustlessness and transparency you were using blockchains for in the first place.