Chainlink whales have notably increased their LINK holdings. This movement follows a visible decrease in the token balance on crypto exchanges, indicating an uptrend. The on-chain data provider Santiment reported that the top 200 LINK wallets recently increased their assets by more than $50 million. These addresses cumulatively hold approximately 746.57 million LINK, valued at around $11.84 billion.
The LINK Accumulation Frenzy!
The accumulation frenzy coincided with a significant drop in LINK’s balance on exchanges. Typically, a falling exchange balance is seen as a bullish signal, suggesting a shift towards long-term holding and less selling pressure. On-chain data confirms that the supply of LINK on exchanges has dropped to about 102 million tokens, the lowest point in over a year.
Furthermore, Chainlink’s staking v0.2 upgrade has sparked new interest in the ecosystem. Data shows that users have staked about 20 million out of the 40.87 million limit. These measures, combined with the prevailing positive sentiments in the market, have led to an increase in LINK’s price. Additionally, Chainlink has shown a notable price increase of 189% since the beginning of the year, compared to Bitcoin‘s 139% increase.
The Swift and Wemade Effect
During this period, the network’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) has been heavily adopted by major traditional institutions, including the global financial messaging network Swift and South Korean gaming giant Wemade. Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov made the following statements on the matter:
Chainlink has become a leading method for minimized off-chain trust computation, going well beyond its status as the leading source of decentralized data, and is now progressing as the leading cross-chain connection standard across both Web3 and TradFi.
Despite the positive on-chain activity, Silo Labs reported an error in Chainlink’s wsETH/ETH price feed on Arbitrum that led to the liquidation of five positions. The error is said to have originated from two significant transactions. Silo Labs emphasized the following:
These transactions were quite large and may have been considered in Chainlink’s VWAP calculation on Arbitrum. The reported price could represent the volume-weighted market at a certain time.
