In a related announcement, SmartContract.com has unveiled plans for the release of the ChainLink Network and the token sale for its Ethereum blockchain-based token LINK.

SmartContract.com Founder and CEO Sergey Nazarov said: “SmartContract.com and the entire team building the ChainLink Network are proud to incorporate such intelligent thought leaders into our team. We are confident that Ari, Andrew, and Hudson will prove to be invaluable assets as the ChainLink Network is built into the preferred way to connect smart contracts to critical data, APIs and traditional bank to bank payments.”

Ari Juels was previously the Chief Scientist at RSA and is currently a distinguished professor of Computer Science at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, as well as a Co-Director of IC3, an initiative of faculty members at Cornell University, Cornell Tech, UC Berkeley, UIUC, and Technion. As the former Chief Scientist of RSA, an industry-leading provider of business-driven security solutions, he played a key role in making significant contributions to the field of cybersecurity. Beyond his many contributions to cybersecurity, Juels also produced world-changing contributions to decentralized infrastructure through work such as the Proof of Retrievability paper, which leading decentralized systems like Storj and Filecoin are heavily based on.

Andrew Miller is a well-known authority on decentralized consensus and the creation of highly secure decentralized systems, which has led him to advise a limited number of top-tier decentralized infrastructure initiatives such as Zcash, Tezos, and the ChainLink Network. In addition, Miller is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the prestigious University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an Associate Director of IC3.

Hudson Jameson brings extensive experience in blockchain, digital currency, and finance to SmartContract.com’s Board of Advisors. Jameson serves as the Ethereum Community Manager and is a well-known authority on smart contracts and the Ethereum development roadmap.

In describing SmartContract.com, Hudson has said: “They have been working on this problem since before Ethereum was even a thing and I believe they have the most experience tackling this problem.”

Juels, Miller, and Jameson join blockchain industry leaders Jake Brukhman and Brian Lio on SmartContract.com’s Board of Advisors. Brukhman was previously the CTO at Triton Research, and also launched CoinFund, a blockchain technology research company and crypto-asset investment vehicle. In addition, he serves as the token sale advisor to leading projects like Kik's Kin Token. Brian Lio is CEO of Smith+Crown, a widely accepted leader in blockchain research and analysis of both ongoing token sales and the larger evolution of decentralized technology.

The problem the ChainLink Network seeks to solve is that smart contracts are unable to access any off-chain resources like data feeds, APIs and/or bank payments. This is an inherent limitation in all smart contracts caused by the method in which consensus is reached around a blockchain’s transaction data.

The ChainLink Network will allow smart contracts to securely access the many off-chain resources they need to become truly useful for the majority of financial agreements. The LINK token will give developers the ability to easily pay each ChainLink Node Operator for the unique data, API, and/or off-chain payment capabilities they provide access to. The ChainLink Network provides a way to securely, quickly, and verifiably connect to external data sources, APIs, internal systems, and existing banking infrastructure.

SmartContract.com Founder and CEO Sergey Nazarov said: “The ChainLink Network is proud to offer a solution to the pressing connectivity problem between smart contracts and external data by creating a fully decentralized blockchain middleware that serves as a conduit between smart contracts, data feeds, APIs, bank payments and back office systems, while making it accessible to smart contracts that need these resources via our LINK token.”

Funds raised in the token sale will be distributed as follows: 35% will go to the node operators incentives fund to incentivize node operators to provide key data feeds, APIs, and off-chain payments to smart contracts, 35% will be sold in the public token sale, and 30% will go to the company for continued development.

SmartContract.com has already acquired industry leaders in financial technology as paying customers for its revolutionary blockchain middleware technology. SWIFT, the leading global provider of secure financial messaging services, is working with the company to create its own SWIFT Smart Oracle, which will allow smart contracts on various networks to make payments, send governance instructions, and release collateral with more than 11,000 banks. After completing a successful phase 1 implementation in May, the details of which are set to be announced at the upcoming SIBOS conference, SWIFT has continued to work with SmartContract.com towards a Phase 2 Implementation.

Gartner, one of the world’s largest technology research and advisory firms, has selected SmartContract.com as a 2017 Blockchain Applications Cool Vendor, validating the significant business value that CTOs, CIOs, and Lead Architects have seen in ChainLink’s secure approach to connecting smart contracts with critical external resources.

In addition, SmartContract.com has partnered with IC3 to launch Town Crier, the only method for generating trusted hardware backed (Intel SGX) oracles on production environment.

Sergey Nazarov said: “SmartContract.com is extremely excited by the immense potential created by these critical partnerships with industry leaders like SWIFT, Gartner, and IC3. This momentum validates that ChainLink is already providing value to industry leaders and solidifies our belief in the ability of the network to securely connect smart contracts to the key off-chain resources they need to become useful for the majority of real world use cases.”