Sergey Nazarov

Biography:

Sergey Nazarov is the son of Russian immigrants and a co-founder of Chainlink. However, many in the crypto community see Nazarov as a possible candidate for being the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. 
He claims to have been in crypto for over 10 years, which would mark his start around the time the Bitcoin white paper was published. Regardless, Nazarov is publicly known for developing the Chainlink network, known for hybrid smart contracts and blockchain oracles.
Nazarov and his family immigrated to New York in the 1990s, where he later earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and management at New York University. Before starting his own crypto business, Nazarov took on various assistant positions to learn how companies are built. 

Nazarov’s 2021:

As of December 2021, Chainlink had over $75 billion in total value secured, thanks largely in part to the network’s oracle service. Oracles expanded their datasets to pull from crypto-related figures like cryptocurrency prices to off-chain numbers like sports results and weather reports. In that same vein, the network crossed over 1,000 projects in development, which are sure to pull from these on-chain numbers.
A significant chunk of these projects can be attributed to Chainlink’s various hackathons over the year. The project’s spring hackathon attracted over 140 project submissions from more than 4,000 participants. Fall’s hackathon resulted in more than 7,500 signups and 280 project submissions — a significant increase in both participants and ideas.
Chainlink also spent 2021 launching services on networks like Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum and Polygon. In assisting the world’s shift into blockchain-based networks, Chainlink also partnered with global enterprises like The Associated Press, AccuWeather, Amazon Web Services and the Google Cloud Platform. Some of these enterprises now run their own Chainlink oracle nodes, feeding information into the Chainlink network.
Part of the project’s advances in 2021 were due to Hybrid Smart Contracts. According to the Chainlink blog, these innovations combine on-chain and off-chain data provided by oracles. Essentially, they are a way for off-chain information to take advantage of the security and decentralization offered by blockchain networks.
Finally, Chainlink introduced Keepers — bots that developers can automate to perform DeFi-specific transactions such as liquidations or harvesting yields — which were later launched on Ethereum, Polygon and the BNB Chain in 2021.

Nazarov’s 2022:

Nazarov and his team believe the future of crypto and smart contracts is in cross-chain solutions. In August 2021, Chainlink introduced the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol for this very reason. 
The CCIP is considered a “new open-source standard for cross-chain communication,” and Chainlink envisions it facilitating connections between hundreds of blockchain networks. This protocol will also serve as the foundation for the Chainlink Programmable Token Bridge.
With billions of dollars locked across various DeFi platforms, Chainlink will focus on inter-chain solutions over the coming year. The company has even brought on multiple experienced advisors, such as the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan. 
Chainlink’s cross-chain vision is already becoming a reality: Throughout 2021, projects integrating Chainlink price-feed oracles saw significant growth with promising initiatives including projects on the Solana Devnet and developments on the Avalanche blockchain.