The most widely used decentralized oracle network, Chainlink, is closely tied to its co-founder Sergey Nazarov. Beginning his career in the early days of Bitcoin, Nazarov solved critical technical challenges in blockchain infrastructure.
Nazarov studied Philosophy and Management at New York University. During his studies, he worked as a teaching assistant to Lawrence Lenihan, a professor specializing in entrepreneurship, and later joined FirstMark Capital as an associate. At FirstMark, he gained exposure to startups, but in parallel began exploring blockchain technology.
His involvement with Bitcoin began in 2010. At that time, blockchain was a new technology with limited recognition outside niche circles.
In 2014, Nazarov co-founded CryptaMail, a decentralized email service for using distributed networks to secure communications. That same year, he founded Secure Asset Exchange, an asset tokenization platform.
Nazarov founded SmartContract in 2014. The company made smart contracts useful for financial markets by linking them with external data feeds. In 2016, SmartContract won the SWIFT Industry Challenge, a competition hosted by the world’s largest global financial messaging network.
The project involved Ethereum-based smart contracts to execute financial transactions such as bond payments, drawing on interest rate data supplied by institutions such as Barclays, BNP Paribas, and Santander.
At the Sibos conference that same year, SmartContract presented a “smart bond” tied to LIBOR rate data. The insights gained from SmartContract led to the creation of Chainlink in 2017.
Nazarov co-founded the project with Steve Ellis and co-authored the original Chainlink white paper alongside Ari Juels, a professor of computer science at Cornell University and previous Chief Scientist of RSA.
Chainlink officially launched in 2019 and was rapidly integrated into the largest DeFi applications. Leading protocols such as Aave, MakerDAO, and Compound rely on Chainlink’s price oracles essential for lending, borrowing, and stablecoin operations.
By aggregating information from multiple independent node operators and via multiple layers of decentralization, Chainlink reduced the risk of manipulation and provided the reliability required for automated financial contracts.
While DeFi adoption brought Chainlink immediate growth and adoption, Nazarov has consistently framed its potential as extending into traditional finance. Chainlink’s infrastructure has been used in solutions with SWIFT, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Euroclear, and some of the largest banks in the world, such as J.P. Morgan and ANZ.
The concept of tokenization, representing financial assets such as bonds, equities, or commodities on blockchains, has been identified by global institutions as a multi-hundred-trillion-dollar development.
In 2023, he co-authored Connecting Blockchains: Overcoming Fragmentation in Tokenised Assets, which examined how secure blockchain interoperability allows tokenized assets to move across networks without being restricted to isolated ecosystems. The paper reinforced Nazarov’s emphasis on building secure infrastructure with Chainlink that connects financial markets.
Apart from his entrepreneurial work, Nazarov has contributed to academic and technical initiatives. His publications include the 2017 Chainlink white paper, Mixicles: Simple Private Decentralized Finance (2019), which introduced privacy-preserving financial contracts, and Chainlink 2.0 (2021) for next-generation oracle network architecture.
Nazarov also holds patents in the United States. One patent describes systems for interfacing smart contracts with external data sources, while another covers methods for producing verifiable randomness within decentralized networks.
His contributions have been acknowledged across the blockchain sector. He was named among CoinDesk’s Most Influential People in Blockchain in 2019 and again in 2023. In 2024, he was awarded Best Web3 Personality of the Year.
Earlier recognition included the 2016 SWIFT Industry Challenge victory with SmartContract, which first brought his work to the attention of financial institutions.
As blockchain adoption has expanded, Nazarov has participated in discussions with policymakers. In 2025, he attended the White House Digital Assets Summit hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump, where he commented on shifting governmental approaches to the industry.
