Chainlink’s New Tool Could Reshape Blockchain Development—Here’s How
Sergey Nazarov, one of Chainlink’s co-founders, thinks the platform’s latest release might be a game-changer. In a recent YouTube video, he compared the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)—the tech that made smart contracts practical in the first place. That’s a big claim. But is it justified?
Nazarov didn’t hold back. “The CRE can have the same impact the EVM had on the blockchain industry,” he said. For context, the EVM let developers write far more complex smart contracts than Bitcoin’s scripting language allowed. What used to take months suddenly took weeks. If Nazarov’s right, CRE could cut that time even further.
Why Developers Might Care
Right now, building smart contracts is messy. There’s on-chain code, off-chain data, and a tangle of connections between them. Nazarov argues CRE simplifies this by handling a lot of the behind-the-scenes work. “From our own experience,” he said, “those months get reduced down to weeks or days.”
That’s a bold statement, but Chainlink’s betting big on it. The CRE, launched in late October, lets developers skip some of the usual Chainlink-specific coding. Instead, they can deploy directly on Chainlink’s platform. It’s designed to bridge traditional finance—banks, payment systems—with blockchain networks.
Think of it like an operating system. It manages workflows, pulling in price feeds, cross-chain messages, and even compliance checks. And it’s chain-agnostic, meaning it’s supposed to work across different blockchains without fuss.
How It Actually Works
For developers, the process is straightforward—at least in theory. They write in JavaScript, TypeScript, or Go, and Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network (DON) handles the rest. Reading data, fetching from APIs, reaching consensus—CRE coordinates all of it. The goal is to make everything run smoothly, no matter which blockchain is involved.
There’s already some real-world testing. In mid-June, Chainlink, JPMorgan’s Kinexys, and Ondo Finance completed a cross-chain settlement using CRE. Nelli Zaltsman from JPMorgan’s Kinexys even hinted that the bank is exploring ways to blend traditional payment systems with on-chain assets.
Still, it’s early days. Big promises in blockchain often face real-world hurdles. But if CRE delivers even half of what Nazarov suggests, it could quietly become one of the most important tools in crypto. Not with a bang, but with developers saving time—and maybe, just maybe, building something new.
