EthSign Will Use Chainlink Keepers and Oracles to Power New Smart Agreement Framework
At EthSign, we are constantly looking to innovate the way people reach legal and enforceable agreements. We are huge believers of the term “smart contract” — a smart agreement running on the blockchain that lives past the signing stage by helping signed parties enforce the execution of terms and automate settlement.
With that in mind, we are pleased to announce EthSign Smart Agreements, an automated contract settlement framework with 3 pillars: data source, trigger conditions, and execution. Users can define on-chain or even off-chain data sources thanks to Chainlink Oracles as well as their respective trigger conditions. With Chainlink Keepers, data is periodically fetched and checked against the trigger conditions. When the conditions are satisfied, execution is automatically carried out by Keepers. The best part? It works hand in hand with contracts signed with EthSign, and every aspect of the framework is entirely customizable.
The launch of EthSign Smart Agreements will extend our ecosystem’s support to smart contracts, enabling users’ digital agreements to automatically execute and settle when predefined events are proven to occur. While our team is building a framework for codifying contract terms into smart contract logic, our platform requires two other main pieces of infrastructure: oracles and keepers.
Smart contracts are simply pieces of code that run on the blockchain and define what outputs the blockchain will generate based on the inputs it receives. However, blockchains are closed networks, meaning the only inputs inherently available to smart contracts are data already stored in the blockchain. This necessitates the need for oracles — external entities that generate truth from external data and events and then input that data into the blockchain. Once on-chain, smart contracts can reference the data to verify whether terms were satisfied or not and to determine the correct settlement, such as confirming if goods arrived on time and what the proper exchange rate should be for payment. Without oracles, our smart agreements have no way of knowing what’s happening in the real world outside the blockchain.
Additionally, smart contracts are not auto-executing, meaning they need to be notified when it’s time to execute. This requires the use of keepers — external entities that are tasked with monitoring the occurrence of specific conditions and calling the smart contract’s logic when conditions are satisfied. Keepers can track simple time-based conditions, like calling the smart contract at a specific date, or track certain real-world events both on-chain and off-chain like a specific e-signature being uploaded through EthSign or specific market conditions. Although not always used together, keepers and oracles are often complimentary, with the keepers letting the contract know when to act and the contract then referencing oracle data to verify those conditions before execution.
We elected to integrate Chainlink as a full spectrum off-chain solution for both oracles and keepers because it’s the most time-tested and fully functional platform in the smart contract economy. Chainlink already secures tens of billions of dollars for leading smart contract applications, while also offering a flexible framework that enables a wide range of off-chain computations to be performed by keepers and virtually any off-chain data feed to be brought on-chain by its oracles. Additionally, Chainlink is blockchain-agnostic, empowering our multi-chain platform to scale alongside it into the future.
“We’re excited to begin integrating Chainlink into EthSign Smart Agreements, extending our growing digital agreement platform to support smart contracts that auto-execute when terms are confirmed to occur,” stated Xin Yan, Co-Founder of EthSign. “Chainlink offers highly generalized and proven solutions for verifying a wide range of external events through both premium data and advanced off-chain computations, as well as an existing decentralized network of highly reliable node operators to bootstrap new services for users building smart agreements on EthSign Smart Agreements.”
Stay tuned for future updates on how to start building smart agreements on EthSign Smart Agreements using Chainlink.
About Chainlink
Chainlink is the industry standard oracle network for powering hybrid smart contracts. Chainlink Decentralized Oracle Networks provide developers with the largest collection of high-quality data sources and secure off-chain computations to expand the capabilities of smart contracts on any blockchain. Managed by a global, decentralized community, Chainlink currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance, gaming, and other major industries.
Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations, from global enterprises to projects at the forefront of the blockchain economy, to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable oracle networks. To learn more about Chainlink, visit chain.link and subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter. To understand the full vision of the Chainlink Network, read the Chainlink 2.0 whitepaper. Want to discuss an integration? Talk to an expert.
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About EthSign
EthSign is a decentralized, electronic signing application built on Ethereum that allows users to upload, sign, and verify digital agreements. EthSign brings several advantages to users including decentralized and immutable storage of encrypted files, ease of integration with other protocols and dApps, and transparency in how data is managed that’s entirely subject to users’ consent.
