In the development signifying that the on-chain and off-chain worlds are finally merging together, credible worldwide news agency founded in 1846 Associated Press announced that it will become a data provider for Chainlink's decentralized oracles on Oct 21. According to the press release, the credible journalism service "will provide trusted economic, sports and race call datasets available to leading blockchains via Chainlink".

This data will be provided after being cryptographically verified by Associated Press to smart contracts running on different blockchains, so they can self execute complex logic code with the added enhancement / enabling of new use cases via access to real world events data. The integration heralds a new era of cryptocurrency and the blockchain industry moving from only speculative value to essential assets providing significant utility and benefit to the society.

It must be noted that Associated Press partnered with Everipedia before to publish U.S. election results on the Ethereum blockchain in 2020. It has also issued NFTs early this year, tokenized news as NFT for collectors and worked to feed data to dynamic NFTs, capable of reacting to conditions. The new enhanced data sets delivering more general information will allow Associated press to assist with enabling smart contracts to make complex decisions. This integration of Associated Press will enable transcendent use cases in finance, securities, exchange services, smart-wallets, recovery, predictions, gaming and gambling etc.

Chainlink technology is the ideal way to provide smart contract developers anywhere in the world with direct, on-demand access to Associated Press trusted economic, sports, and race call data. Working with Chainlink allows this information to be compatible with any blockchain. The open-source software is reliable, secure, and widely used across leading blockchain networks.

Dwayne Desaulniers - Associated Press Director Of Blockchain & Data Licensing

According to the Associated Press "the data can be used to automate key processes that happen on-chain, including informing markets of election race calls, triggering an on-chain trade when a company’s quarterly financials are released, or augmenting the appearance of non-fungible tokens based on real-world events". This new initiative by the Associated Press confirms that interest and demand is rising for trustless code and decentralized protocols, operating without any intermediaries. The Association Press integration with Chainlink oracles will assist further with bridging real world with the blockchain protocols.

Associated Press has established itself as one of the most trusted independent news organizations in the world for real-time news in all formats. Given its large and continually growing repository of facts and data, combined with Chainlink’s proven oracle infrastructure for providing reliable data feeds across leading blockchain networks, it makes sense for the AP to launch a Chainlink oracle node and support innovation within emerging smart contract industries

William Herkelrath - Managing Director Chainlink Labs

Chainlink is the premier decentralized data oracles service, which connects smart contracts to off-chain real world events information, particularly the outcome. The oracles are secure, resistant to manipulation and thus reliable. They are sourced from high quality data aggregators, transferred securely via nodes and finally delivered to smart contracts, so they can make decisions based on them. The protocol has the highest network effect and integrations with entities / companies than any of its competitor. Its native token is the ERC-20 standard LINK token.

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day.

Chainlink released a report about Chainlink staking. Many crypto enthusiasts were awaiting this event. It will start around July 27. Users will witness how their LINK tokens serve as collateral and assist with the processing & security of the oracle network. This will ensure that most participants in the network are honest. Dishonest participants get a penalty and will lose a portion of their stake.

The recently released report titled "Explicit Staking in Chainlink 2.0: An Overview" references the earlier released vision for Chainlink 2.0. It would feature decentralized oracle networks (DONs) that are capable of performing off-chain computations. Chainlink staking would supplement the vision of high-value hybrid smart contracts. This is done by raising the cost required to attack the network and attempting to make it economically unfeasible.

Chainlink staking got a defensive design against a variety of attacks from well-funded adversaries. This goes to the extent that they are required to spend more than the combined deposits of all nodes in a decentralized oracle network (DON) resulting in high cost-efficient security, which makes these attacks extremely expensive and unfeasible by raising it above the value that can be extracted.

It defines the service agreements that form the basis of all decentralized oracle networks (DONs) defining key parameters and performance requirements, data sources used, update latency, node payments, LINK tokens to stake etc. DONs have reporting rounds, where they release oracle reports with each node's response for a piece of data. The service agreements define the process for doing so and conditions for slashing. Chainlink marketplace can help to filter out nodes based on their performance, data sources used, networks supported etc.

This long-awaited staking would use a two-tier network. The first tier would consist of the low cost and high-efficiency decentralized oracle network (DON) of nodes staking LINK tokens. It is also responsible for generating reports regularly. These will come with maximum security and higher cost second-tier DON networks, which would oversee the first, provide arbitration and apply penalties for mass data deviations / malicious behavior.

The decentralized oracle networks (DONs) complemented by Chainlink staking have a dispute resolution mechanism, If a dispute were to arise, all users would vote on the accuracy of the original report by "using a cryptographic TLS proof produced by DECO that provides definitive Zero-Knowledge Proof based evidence from one or multiple data providers".

Since the oracle reports are critically important, second-tier voters are economically incentivized to provide correct dispute resolution or risk their own security, reputation, usability of their products plus the value of their own token. These second-tier participants are likely to be the core development teams behind protocols as well as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) governing them.

Chainlink staking has concentrated rewards. The misbehaving participants will pay to the node raising the alarm or the dispute regarding data accuracy. This allows for a system design where for each tier, one node has to be paid extensively to cause sabotage or malicious activity.

It raised the cost of the attack to the maximum. The security increases with the number of nodes in the system. It would also feature misreporting insurance to protect against incorrect alerts causing problems. A definite date for the Chainlink staking mechanism coming live didn't launch yet, but from the looks of it, work appears to be progressing fast.