While Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are showing some tumultuous volatility, it’s time to look at some of the lesser-known altcoins. Oracle service provider Chainlink has shot 22% to hit a new all-time high above $22. At press time, LINK is trading at a price of $22.16 with a market cap of $8.8 billion.

With this move, LINK has become the ninth most valuable cryptocurrency replacing Stellar (XLM). The Chainlink rally has been back with strong on-chain fundamentals. On-chain data provider Santiment shows its “Holders Distribution data” wherein the whale number has remained high whereas the mid-tier addresses are growing rapidly.

On the other hand, the active address for LINK has also hit a new 5-month high. This possibly comes on the backdrop of rising DeFi activity as Chainlink finds a solid use-case in the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) space.

🔗🎉 The best kinds of #AllTimeHighs are when projects like #Chainlink, which hit $22.42 today, are backed by great fundamental usage. With this historic achievement, our metrics indicate that $LINK had the highest day of active addresses in ~5 months. 😎 https://t.co/KzjC2tpOUL pic.twitter.com/i4jtVVk9u5

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 16, 2021

Cryptocurrency brokerage platform and leading financial market infrastructure Paxos announced its partnership with Chainlink on Thursday, January 14. Paxos will leverage Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network to make its asset-backed token Paxos Standard (PAX) and Paxos Gold (PAXG) available across the decentralized finance (DeFi) market.

Adding Paxos tokens to the Chainlink feed will make integration easier for different DeFi applications. Walter Hessert, Head of Strategy at Paxos said:

“Chainlink oracles will accelerate the adoption of Paxos’ USD and Gold-backed tokens in DeFi. With the proof of reserve and price available on-chain, our regulated assets will become more accessible for DeFi users.”

Currently, USDT and USDC have a lion’s share in the stablecoin utility in the DeFi space. Also, only MakerDAO offers PAX as a collateral type. The new partnership will let more DeFi projects to use the PAX stablecoin. Also, the Paxos Gold (PAXG) can bring the utility of real-world assets to the DeFi market.