Chainlink (LINK) LINK Secures $95B as TradFi Giants Adopt Oracle Standard

Chainlink (LINK) has quietly become the plumbing for institutional crypto. The oracle network now secures over $95 billion in total value across 452 protocols, according to recent data, as major banks and even the U.S. government have started routing critical financial data through its infrastructure.

LINK trades at $13.38 with a $9.33 billion market cap as of March 2025, down 3% in the past 24 hours despite the network's expanding institutional footprint.

Banks Are Actually Using This

The 2025 adoption list reads like a who's who of traditional finance. UBS, Mastercard, and J.P. Morgan have integrated Chainlink's infrastructure for tokenization workflows. ANZ deployed the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) for cross-currency purchases and stablecoin issuance—real transactions, not pilot programs.

Perhaps more telling: the U.S. Department of Commerce now publishes macroeconomic data on-chain via Chainlink Data Feeds. Government agencies don't typically experiment with crypto infrastructure unless they're confident it won't break.

The Technical Moat

Three new services launched in 2025 explain why institutions picked Chainlink over alternatives. The Runtime Environment (CRE) handles compliant financial workflows. The Automated Compliance Engine addresses regulatory requirements that keep bank legal teams up at night. Confidential Compute services enable privacy-preserving transactions—essential for institutions that can't broadcast their trading activity to the world.

CCIP has become the standard for moving tokenized assets between chains. With real-world asset (RWA) tokenization projected to accelerate through 2026, Chainlink's first-mover advantage in cross-chain infrastructure positions it to capture significant market share.

What This Means for LINK

The disconnect between network adoption and token price creates an interesting setup. Chainlink dominates DeFi development activity even as overall builder numbers decline across the sector, according to December 2025 data. Network effects compound—more integrations mean more protocols depend on Chainlink oracles, which attracts more institutional users.

Chainlink founder Sergey Nazarov predicted widespread DeFi adoption by 2030 in November 2025 remarks. The current institutional trajectory suggests that timeline might be conservative. Watch for RWA tokenization announcements from major asset managers as the next catalyst—Chainlink's CCIP infrastructure makes it the likely backend for these products.