Chainlink Market Update: LINK jumps into a DeFi boom bandwagon

• Chainlink regains ground after the initial sell-off to $16.00.
• The recovery is driven by a massive boom in the DeFi industry.

Chainlink has recovered after the sell-off to $16.00; however, it still has some way to go to the recent top of $17.74. At the time of writing, LINK/USD is changing hands at $16.51, down nearly 5%  on a day-to-day basis and unchanged since the beginning of Monday. Chainlink is now the fifth-largest digital asset with the current market capitalization of $5.68 billion, while its average daily trading volume exceeds $1.5 billion. 

Chainlink’s LINK more than doubled in value in August. The coin started the last summer month at $7.70 and hit the all-time high at $20.00 on August 21 before the downside correction pushed the price to $16.00. Chainlink is one of the beneficiaries of the boom in the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry as it provides the infrastructure for DeFi protocols. 

Recently, the team purchased DECO, the solution for private oracles developed by Cornell University. According to the press release, the acquisition will allow the project to expand its functionality to DeFi industry. 

DECO improves the HTTPS/TLS usage for data transmission across the internet. The solution has been developed by Dr. Ari Juels, the former Chief Scientist of RSA, who will join Chainlink Lab as its new Chief Scientist. Commenting the news, Chainlink’s co-founder Sergey Nazarov, said:

DECO’s ability to provide previously unavailable data security when transferring data over the internet, will greatly increase the private and premium data that becomes available for use by all Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 applications. 

Basically, DECO will guaranty that the data remains private while it is transmitted via various channels from private and premium data sources. The solution ensures a high-security level due to advanced cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs technology. 

LINK/USD: The technical picture

On the intraday charts, the local resistance for LINK/USD is created by 1-hour SMA50 at $16.70, followed by $17.00.  A sustainable move above this area will allow for an extended recovery towards $17.40 created by the upper line of the 1-hour Bollinger Band and the weekend high of $17.74.  On the downside, the local psychological support of $16.00 is followed by 1-hour SMA100 at $15.80 and 1-hour SMA200 at $15.40. Once this area is passed, $15.00 will come into focus.

LINK/USD 1-hour chart