SERGEY Nazarov is the multimillionaire co-founder of Chainlink.
But what is the story behind Nazarov and what’s his net worth?
Who is Sergey Nazarov?
Sergey Nazarov was born in Moscow, Russia in 1986 but moved to the United States in the 1990s with his parents, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in management and philosophy from New York University in 2007.
He started his career building peer-to-peer marketplaces, before joining the investment team at FirstMark Capital.
Nazarov returned to Russia after leaving FirstMark in November 2010 and started to work for venture capitalist firm QED Investors.
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Nazarov introduced the firm to cryptocurrency in 2011, when Bitcoin was just $30.
QED Capital’s focus on blockchain rapidly increased and the company created the first cryptocurrency and blockchain-based web-mail, effectively eliminating the authority of a central storage server.
QED Capital then went on to create the Secure Asset Exchange (SAE) that revolutionised value exchange.
SAE is one of the first forms of a decentralised application (DApp). It was an exchange, based on a network of more than 100 nodes, used to transfer cryptocurrencies using smart contracts.
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Nazarov led both projects which were founded in 2014.
In 2017, Chainlink was founded by Steve Ellis, Ari Juels and Sergey Nazarov. In September of that year, LINK token was distributed with a $32 million ICO (initial coin offering), following the publication of the whitepaper.
What is Chainlink and how did it come to be?
Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network that connects blockchains to real-world datasets such as events, data feeds, and payment methods that aren’t native to the blockchain.
This means information that’s not native to the blockchain can be communicated to the blockchain via a decentralized oracle.
Chainlink’s key feature is its ability to create a “trustless” network where nodes can securely communicate with one another.
This is done through blockchain technology and a Byzantine fault-tolerant protocol, which ensures that nodes continue functioning even if some are compromised.
Chainlink can track goods moving from one country to another or monitor financial transactions in real-time.
Could Sergey Nazarov be Satoshi Nakamoto?
Sergey Nazarov has been linked to Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s anonymous creator.
The first piece of evidence linking Nazarov to the creation of Bitcoin is that he purchased the domain smartcontract.com just six days before Nakamoto’s white paper was published in 2008.
Right now, the domain leads to the Chainlink Labs site, to support the development of LINK oracles, but the first version of the webpage illustrated the applications of smart contracts to the Bitcoin project.
Then, between December 2008 and January 2009, a user allegedly posted some hotel reviews using the same proxy as Satoshi. His name? Sergey.
Satoshi Nakamoto and Sergey Nazarov also have the same initials – S and N.
In an interview with Nazarov, Lex Fridman asked: “Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? There are quite a few people who suggest that person is you. So, is it you?”
Sergey Nazarov said: “I don’t know who it is, but if I had to guess, it’s probably a group of people.”
Before adding: “This kind of focus on who is Satoshi or isn’t shouldn’t, in my opinion, matter so much because, regardless of who it is, that should have no substantial significant effect or bearing on the functioning or the value or the use or the security of Bitcoin”.
The question of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity remains a mystery, but it is possible Sergey Nazarov is the man behind the pseudonym.
What is Sergey Nazarov’s net worth?
Sergey Nazarov has a net worth of around $600 million.