Matic becomes the first outside Ethereum to launch native Chainlink feeds

Matic Network, a smart-contract platform acting as both a layer one and layer two for Ethereum, announced on Thursday the full launch of five Chainlink price feeds that are set to power its ecosystem.

Though there are many promised or existing Chainlink integrations outside of Ethereum, the majority of them are still in development or are indirectly using Ethereum feeds.

Matic now features five price feeds: MATIC/USD, USDC/USD, ETH/USD, USDT/USD and DAI/USD, promising that more will come later.

Chainlink’s Verifiable Randomness Function is set to be integrated soon as well, which would allow Matic app developers to build provably fair chance games or other integrations.

The team said that the integration will be crucial for decentralized finance developers wishing to build on Matic, pointing to several projects, such as EasyFi and PlotX, that already committed to using Chainlink oracles.

The race for layer-two scaling to power the next cycle of DeFi adoption often sees Rollup-based projects as the favorites. Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Matic Network, told Cointelegraph that Matic’s hybrid approach is already generating interest, despite many being critical of Plasma as a solution for smart-contract scaling:

“The viability of Plasma for DeFi is a hotly debated topic but there is no other Plasma implementation in production apart from Matic. And turns out that in production it works fine and has not encountered any issues after 4+ months of launch of mainnet.”

He argued that the flexibility of Matic, letting developers choose between Plasma and proof-of-stake, can entice different types of developers. “Many apps like Games, VR spaces use pure POS while some DeFi and prediction markets choose Plasma,” he added.

Like other layer-two solutions, Matic supports Ethereum tooling and allows developers to “simply pick up their Ethereum smart contracts and deploy it on Matic sidechains within a matter of minutes,” Nailwal said.

While Matic has been somewhat left out of mainstream comparisons, direct support from Chainlink can strongly contribute to further adoption. "We believe Chainlink’s decision to build on Matic was rationalized on the basis of where the greatest demand for its services lies,” Nailwal continued.

The number of prediction markets building on the platform, which have a particularly pronounced need for reliable price information, likely contributed to the decision to integrate Matic, he concluded.