Chainlink (LINK), the oracle-focused blockchain protocol, surpassed Bitcoin Greenbacks (BCH) to become the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency as of Jan. 18.

The market capitalization of Chainlink now hovers at $ix billion and roughly $500 million away from the next biggest crypto nugget, Litecoin (LTC).

LINKUSDT one-24-hour interval toll nautical chart (Binance). Source: TradingView.com

Why is Chainlink surging so speedily?

The toll of Chainlink rose by thirteen% in the last 24 hours and the momentum of LINK likely comes from the positive sentiment around DeFi.

The DeFi market as a whole has been rallying strongly throughout recent months with AAVE and SUHI being the nigh recent standouts. The uptrend can be attributed to the fast-growing metric called total value locked (TVL), which measures the amount of upper-case letter deployed across DeFi protocols.

As of January 18, the TVL across DeFi protocols is estimated to be around $24 billion and it is still apace growing.

Total value locked in DeFi. Source: Digital Assets Data

Chainlink benefits from the growth of the DeFi space because oracles feed DeFi protocols with crucial market data.

When DeFi protocols, such equally lending platforms or exchanges, fetch price information, they go it from oracles like Chainlink and Band Protocol.

Equally such, when at that place are generally more users in the DeFi marketplace, oracles do good from the increasing TVL of the DeFi market.

Where does LINK go adjacent?

On-chain analysts at Santiment found that dormant tokens are standing to motility. This trend has further fueled the bull trend of various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether and LINK. They said:

"Dormant tokens continue to be moved at rapid rates during this #crypto bull run, and dips in our 'Mean Dollar Invested Age' metric indicate the increased charge per unit of $BTC, $ETH, $LINK, $LTC, and peculiarly $REN (which triggered its massive +60% week)."

With LINK surpassing an all-time high, information technology is now technically in "price discovery." In technical assay, cost discovery happens when the value of an asset exceeds its record-high and begins searching for a new ceiling.

In improver to the positive technicals of Chainlink, the oracle provider too does non accept many competitors apart from Ring Protocol, which is based on the Cosmos blockchain network.

The network effect of Chainlink would probable act equally some other catalyst in the foreseeable future, particularly equally Ethereum (ETH) continues to dominate the DeFi space.