Chainlink founder: RWAs, resilience and infrastructure will define crypto’s next era

Chainlink co‑founder Sergey Nazarov outlined three structural trends shaping crypto’s next era: growing market resilience, accelerating tokenization of real‑world assets (RWAs), and rising demand for infrastructure (oracles, data feeds and interoperability). He argued recent drawdowns avoided cascading institutional collapses—signaling improved risk management—and noted that on‑chain RWA issuance and perpetual markets (including commodity perps) have expanded even during price weakness. Nazarov said this shift makes data reliability, Proof‑of‑Reserves and cross‑chain connectivity core value drivers. Chainlink positions itself to capture that demand, citing market data and PoR services, roughly 70% share of certain DeFi data feeds, and partnerships with institutions such as S&P and ICE. For traders, the implications are practical: trading activity may increasingly follow liquidity, oracle infrastructure and RWA product adoption rather than purely BTC/ETH price moves. Opportunities may arise around oracle providers, tokenization platforms, on‑chain perpetuals and cross‑chain liquidity, while volatility alone could become a weaker indicator of long‑term growth.