Chainlink Partners Commerce Department to Bring Data to Blockchain

Chainlink has teamed with the U.S. Department of Commerce to bring government macroeconomic data on-chain.

The new Chainlink Data Feeds, announced Wednesday (Aug. 28), aim to securely deliver important information involving key U.S. economic data on-chain, including real gross domestic product (GDP), personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index and real final sales to private domestic purchasers.

“Bringing U.S. government data on-chain unlocks innovative use cases for blockchain markets,” Chainlink said in a news release.

Among them are automated trading strategies, increased composability of tokenized assets, issuance of new types of digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFI) protocol risk management based on macroeconomic factors.

According to the release, the data is updated monthly or quarterly as applicable, and is rolling out on ten blockchain ecosystems, beginning with the following chains: Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Botanix, Ethereum, Linea, Mantle, Optimism, Sonic and ZKsync.

Support for other blockchain networks can be incorporated as time goes on based on user demand, Chainlink said.

The effort is happening at a time when blockchain technology “is putting on a suit and tie as it tries to woo the staid halls of Fortune 500 businesses,” as PYMNTS wrote earlier this month. “As the sector’s innovative architecture for money movement matures beyond hype cycles and speculative tokens toward cross-border B2B payments and treasury management, a clearer, more operational question now faces the enterprise C-suite.”

But how does this new digital financial infrastructure work, and how can enterprise finance leaders employ it for better, faster and cheaper money movement?

For finance chiefs and corporate treasurers, the answer rests on the layered structure of blockchain networks. These layers, known in technical terms as Layers 0 through 3, represent different parts of the blockchain stack, from the underlying communication protocols to the interfaces that involve customers and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

For example, Circle recently introduced Arc, a Layer 1 blockchain designed for institutional-grade stablecoin payments, foreign exchange (FX) and capital markets, while Nuvei announced it is employing stablecoin rails to expand its global money movement capabilities.

The same week brought the news that Stripe was developing a new blockchain in partnership with cryptocurrency-focused venture capital firm Paradigm.

“The importance of understanding the taxonomy around these corporate-focused blockchains and their technical layers is becoming a boardroom imperative,” PYMNTS wrote. “Just as traditional finance evolved distinct but interlocking systems for messaging (SWIFT), settlement (ACH, Fedwire) and compliance (anti-money laundering and know your customer), blockchain layers map to similarly specialized functions, but with different speed, cost and composability profiles.”