Expanding Into Blockchain Markets Through Chainlink
Sportmonks is a provider of reliable sport data feeds, powered by a fast, highly available, and easy to implement API. We currently provide live data on three sports: soccer, F1, and cricket. In our most popular API, soccer, we offer a variety of data such as live scores, player statistics, team stats, seasons stats, bookmakers and markets, (live) odds, predictions and coverage across more than 1,200 leagues.
Given the growth in development around smart contracts, there have been more and more sports-based applications running on top of blockchains. As a leading sports data provider, we recognize that all these on-chain markets require high-quality sports data in order to fairly and reliably determine outcomes, such as the winner of a match or whether a player scored a goal or BTTS etc.
In order for Sportmonks’ data to become accessible on various blockchains, we need to make use of a blockchain oracle. The reason being that blockchains do not inherently generate sports data nor can they make external API calls. Instead, they need to leverage an oracle network to fetch external data on their behalf and deliver it on-chain.
Upon examining different oracle solutions, we selected Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network because it’s the most secure, widely adopted, and time-tested solution in the market. It already has a large and growing network effect of data providers and smart contract applications connecting with one another through it, including several sports-based blockchain applications, as well as multiple other key features important to our adoption:
- Data Integrity – Chainlink nodes cryptographically sign the data they broadcast on the blockchain, allowing users to definitely verify the origin of our data and avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
- Blockchain Agnostic – Chainlink nodes can function on any blockchain network, serving as a single gateway to sell our data on all blockchains both now and in the future.
- Security Focused – Chainlink is thoroughly audited open-source software built upon strong academic research and maintained by a large developer community, ensuring high levels of security and reliability for oracle services.
- Broad Adoption – Chainlink is the most widely used oracle network and secures billions of dollars in on-chain value, presenting us with a large developer base to tap into that’s already utilizing Chainlink for data.
We can’t wait to use Chainlink’s full set of features to support the early growth of on-chain sports markets, and look forward to seeing what next-generation applications get built using SportMonk’s premium data.
“Running a Chainlink node marks a new chapter in the journey of Sportmonks, providing us with a universal gateway to bring our premium sports data to leading blockchain networks in order to support new decentralized sports markets,” stated Jurgen Kolkman, CEO of Sportmonks. “Not only does Chainlink help us expand our addressable market as a data provider, but it’s data signing framework enables us to increase the security of our on-chain data without requiring that we implement any server-side modifications.”
About the Chainlink Network
Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universally connected smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains as well as real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink is introducing a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others.
Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.
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About the Sportmonks Sports Data
Sportmonks is a Sports Data provider for customers that want to build sports websites and applications by using our Sports API’s. The Sports Data can be used to build Livescore Portals, Betting/ iGaming websites/applications, Sports Fantasy Games or any other Sport Data related applications. Our main focus is on providing Football/Soccer Data. For more information, follow this link.
