The Rollup · Oct 31, 2026 · 27m · 19m saved
With Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink
Photo via consensus2025.coindesk.com
Blockchains keep growing only while new money keeps arriving, and Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, told The Rollup that the industry's job now is to multiply the money already in decentralized finance (DeFi) tenfold. He spoke from Chainlink's Link:NYC conference in Hudson Yards.
The usual pitch for tokenization is that putting an asset on a blockchain is progress in itself. Sergey said it is not: a tokenized fund, stock or dollar has to work better than the traditional version, or there is no reason to own it.
"Tokenization in and of itself is not enough to create value for real-world assets as a trend. What you need is for the tokenization to create an onchain financial product or asset that's better than the traditional version." — Sergey Nazarov
Sergey has built Chainlink from a supplier of outside data to blockchains into cross-chain connectivity and packaged products for institutions, and he said he discusses the global distribution of US assets with the Trump administration, the SEC and the CFTC.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 27 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
Tokenization creates no value unless the onchain product beats the traditional one
24/7 markets need 24/7 data, and traditional exchanges go dark on weekends
Chainlink stitches weekend prices from several sources into one continuous feed
Linking the cash leg and the securities leg of traditional markets would unlock lending volume on both sides
The biggest volume will come from international markets, not from Swift and DTCC
Sergey points to pent-up demand in the Middle East and Asia for US stocks and bonds
AI agents are an interface for humans, not autonomous decision-makers, in Sergey's view
The industry's next task is to 10x the money already in DeFi with better tokenized products
1. Chainlink Is Hard to Explain
Sergey said Chainlink is difficult to describe because it no longer does one thing. It began as an oracle, a service that feeds outside data to blockchains, and has added cross-chain connectivity, orchestration and now packaged "focused solutions."
Chainlink's products share one purpose: powering complex smart contracts
"The thing that ties everything together is that Chainlink powers advanced smart contracts. But advanced smart contracts need a lot of different things." — Sergey Nazarov
He named two of the packaged products. CustodySync, already adopted by Anchorage, mirrors assets held by a custodian onto a blockchain so they can be used in DeFi without leaving custody. Fulcrum is a securities and cash lending product spanning DeFi and traditional finance. It draws on CCIP, Chainlink's cross-chain messaging protocol, on several data sources and on ACE, its compliance tool.
Sergey compares Chainlink to Amazon Web Services, which most end users never need to understand
"It's kind of what happens with larger, more successful companies. Like, if you ask, 'What is Amazon Web Services?' It's actually hard to explain because it's not just about a cloud. They have hundreds of services." — Sergey Nazarov
Only the builders on top of it need to know how it works. "Our goal is not necessarily to make everything completely understandable because the average person in the crypto world is not always the user of Chainlink," Sergey added.
