Blockchain oracle network Chainlink has been creating a lot of buzz in the cryptocurrency industry lately. Primarily, due to the various partnerships, it has entered into over the past year. However, it is necessary for blockchains to continue innovating and expanding in order to stay relevant, considering the number of rivals that are ready as replacements. To that end, Chainlink has now released an upgraded version of its Chainlink Verifiable Random Function, or VRF on the mainnet.
What’s new?
In an announcement for the same, the network noted that the VRF had by far received over three million request transactions from NFT projects and blockchain games. This upgradation, above all, is aimed at reducing the fee on these transactions by 60% compared to the v1.
Apart from that, the VRF v2 will also offer enhanced subscription management, the ability to adjust gas limits, expanded block confirmations, and being able to request multiple random numbers in a single on-chain transaction, the announcement noted.
The VRF is a random number generator that is being leveraged by a number of crypto projects, including the NFT collection Bored Apes Yacht Club and the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity. “By generating a random number along with cryptographic proof, VRF delivers provably fair, verifiable, tamper-proof results,” according to Chainlink.
Randomized numbers are supremely important in the blockchain industry, as they are used to generate private keys for wallets and transactions. Moreover, they are also being used now to securely mint NFTs and their attributes and to ensure fair outcomes in blockchain-based games.
Aleksander Leonard Larsen, Chief Operating Officer of Axie Infinity, commented on the development saying:
“Verifiable randomness solutions like Chainlink VRF v2 are essential for developers introducing entropy into on-chain gaming and NFT experiences, empowering them to create fair and tamper-proof play-to-earn games.”
What’s up with VRF?
According to the announcement, the VRF currently serves around 2,200 unique smart contracts across multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain (BSC). These include a number of NFT projects and blockchain-based games, many of which are building towards the metaverse, as the VRF allows them to randomize NFT values and fairly distribute ownership.
While the VRF v2 has only been released on the Ethereum mainnet for now, Chainlink has assured users that other chains associated with the network will also have the upgrade soon, including Polygon and BSC.
Even as the newer version of the VRF sounds exciting, it is hardly the biggest development Chainlink has experienced in the recent past. The network added 720 integrations in 2021, with 100 being in the month of December alone, according to a previous blog post. While 380 new DeFi projects integrated Chainlink oracles during this time, more exciting was the explosion of over 200 NFT projects launching with Chainlink oracle networks, chiefly the VRF.
It also added a host of data providers in the year, including the likes of the Associated Press, and AccuWeather, which has ‘paved the way for exciting new use cases, verticals, and entire industries for smart contracts.’
