Chainlink Unveils ‘Data Streams’ to Reduce Latency, Expands Decentralized Computing

Chainlink, the blockchain data oracle provider, has launched “Data Streams,” a new product designed to reduce network latency.

The offering has now entered early access on layer 2 platform Arbitrum, the company said Monday in a press release.

Chainlink Data Streams combines low latency market data and automated execution “to unlock a new generation of ultra-fast and user-friendly derivatives products," according to the company. Low latency market data refers to financial market data that is delivered without delay.

The product uses a "pull-based" data oracle solution, where ”high frequency market data is continuously made available off-chain,” the press release said. Oracle reports are generated per block, and users can retrieve them off-chain and then validate with their on-chain transaction. This differs from the push-based solution where oracles proactively feed data to smart contracts at various time intervals.

Using a pull-based system reduces the latency – how much time it takes for a data packet to travel from one point to another – of updates. Latency is a common problem that afflicts distributed networks, since messages have to propagate to nodes, often causing delays in finalizing and synchronizing transactions.

“Data Streams not only enables DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols to support execution speeds and a user experience that rival centralized exchanges, but to do so without compromising on the core Web3 value of fair, transparent, and decentralized infrastructure,” Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said in the release.

Also on Monday, the company announced new decentralized computing capabilities with Functions Beta and Automation 2.0 on the main network.

Chainlink Functions will enable developers to connect decentralized applications to any application programme interface (API), an intermediary layer which processes data transfers across systems.

Meanwhile, Chainlink Functions allows high value jobs to be automated at a tenth of the cost, saving up to 90% in gas costs, Chainlink said in the press release.

"With all these new updates, we are creating a standard for how all developers can connect heterogenous Web3 components with any existing system they can think about, move data and value seamlessly across multiple chain ecosystem, and create new verifiable applications," Kemal El Moujahid, chief product officer at Chainlink Labs, said in a statement provided by a spokesperson. Chainlink Labs is the primary developer contributing to Chainlink.

Read more: Decentralized Exchange GMX Connects to Chainlink's Low-Latency Oracles Following Community Vote