AthleteX Will Use Chainlink Sports Data to Power Novel Athlete Performance Tokens

AthleteX
4 min readJul 20, 2021

AthleteX Markets is excited to officially announce that we will be upgrading our oracle mechanism to industry-leader Chainlink to access high-quality sports data within our synthetic asset issuance and decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol on Polygon. Chainlink’s sports data will enable the creation of Athlete Tokens — collateralized synthetic tokens that represent specific athletes, with values pegged to individual performance data.

We selected Chainlink as our go-to oracle provider because it’s the most flexible and time-tested oracle solution in the industry, already securing tens of billions in dollars of value for leading blockchain projects. Chainlink Data Feeds not only allow us to access premium data sports data for our initial WAR (Wins Above Replacement) stat, but they provide a framework to easily onboard additional data feeds and increase our decentralization as AthleteX Markets grows in user-demand and TVL.

Building Reliable Athlete Performance Tokens On AthleteX

Chainlink will provide our system with real-world athletic performance data in a secure and reliable manner, which is key information when minting, swapping, burning, and checking the collateralization of Athlete tokens. The initial integration involves custom WAR (Wins Above Replacement) price formulas for top NFL positions like wide receiver, quarterback, and running backs. Depending on the athletes’ performance, athlete tokens will vary in exchange rates accordingly.

Athlete Token swaps rely on price feeds to determine exchange rates between tokens. For our platform, price feeds are an aggregate of overall athlete performance statistics relative to a base-level athlete (commonly referred to as a Free Agent or Replacement). Premium sports statistics data fetched and delivered by Chainlink oracles is inputted into the WAR formula, which calculates and outputs a price for each individual Athlete Token in real-time on the AthleteX DEX (read more about this in our Litepaper).

Currently, the WAR formula is sourced from stat researchers and the centralized AthleteX team. We decided to upgrade to Chainlink Data Feeds because they offer:

  • High-Quality Data — Chainlink oracles can manage API keys and account logins, allowing them to access premium data from highly available and financially incentivized APIs.
  • Reliable Nodes — Chainlink Data Feeds are secured by a large collection of independent, security-reviewed, and Sybil-resistant oracle nodes run by leading enterprises, data providers, and DevOps teams who have a strong on-chain history of performance even during extreme network congestion.
  • Decentralized Infrastructure — Chainlink Data Feeds can be decentralized at the data source and oracle network levels, eliminating central points of failure.
  • Transparent Performance — Chainlink Data Feeds can be monitored by anyone in real-time, using existing data analytic tools such as market.link and reputation.link, allowing users to verify the data triggering their contract.

“Chainlink provides our platform with the necessary data quality and oracle tooling needed to capitalize on our current position as the premiere on-chain athlete performance marketplace. Our Chainlink integration can unlock significant governance power and incentives for our community as it pertains to deciding on stat calculation methodologies, all while being surprisingly simple to implement.” — Rob Klages, Co-Founder of AthleteX Markets

As the AthleteX community continues to grow, outside development efforts are welcome to begin contributing to our platform. Check out our website and jump into our community Discord to join the huddle. Once you’re on Discord, make sure to let us know if you are interested in contributing to further development efforts and we’ll direct you to our grant program. Currently, our team and community developers are working on back-end smart contract development, front-end UI development, and affiliate marketing.

If you have any questions about our team, our project, or our mission — check out our FAQ article along with the resources provided above.

About AX Markets

At AthleteX Markets, our mission is to provide people a way to invest directly into the performance of their favorite athletes. Our decentralized exchange and issuance protocol facilitates mints, burns, and swaps for Athlete Tokens pegged to athletes’ sports performance data.

Athlete Tokens are collateralized by AthleteX (AX), our native coin, enabling the issuance of Athlete Tokens by locking AX coin into a staking contract. AX stakers provide liquidity for Athlete Token swaps on our DEX and receive rewards in the form of a Liquidity Provider Fee. AX coin holders also retain voting rights on our decentralized governance protocol, deciding on which Athlete Token markets are listed and how the WAR formula will be calculated. Click here to learn more about AX Coin.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the most widely used and secure way to power universally connected smart contracts. With Chainlink, developers can connect any blockchain with high-quality data sources from other blockchains and real-world data. Managed by a global, decentralized community of hundreds of thousands of people, Chainlink is introducing a fairer model for contracts. Its network currently secures billions of dollars in value for smart contracts across the decentralized finance (DeFi), insurance and gaming ecosystems, among others.

Chainlink is trusted by hundreds of organizations to deliver definitive truth via secure, reliable data feeds. To learn more, visit chain.link, subscribe to the Chainlink newsletter, and follow @chainlink on Twitter.

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