Chainlink is severely undervalued: monopolizing a 30 trillion tokenization market yet only 1/15 of XRP's market capitalization.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

Original Title: LINK Research Report Interpretation: The Hidden Winner of Dollar Tokenization, Where Does the 30x Growth Potential Come From?

If you've been following the crypto market lately, you must have noticed LINK's strong performance.

Public data shows that LINK has risen nearly 30% in the past month; for an old coin with a lukewarm narrative, this performance is quite remarkable, and discussions about LINK on social media have been increasing recently.

However, while most people are still debating whether LINK is just an "oracle token," the world's largest financial institutions, such as JPMorgan Chase, SWIFT, Mastercard, and DTCC, have quietly positioned Chainlink at the core of their blockchain strategies.

Recently, the cryptocurrency investment institution M31 Capital released a comprehensive 90-page in-depth research report, making a bold prediction: LINK still has the potential to increase by 20-30 times.

The report suggests that the wave of tokenization of global financial assets will bring about a $30 trillion opportunity, and Chainlink is not one of the participants but rather the sole infrastructure monopolist in the blockchain middleware space.

Deep Tide TechFlow has interpreted and organized the report, selecting key viewpoints and data for better reading.

(Note: This report and interpretation do not constitute any investment advice. The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile, so please do your own research and judgment.)

Core Investment Logic: Relative undervaluation, the "buying narrative" comes to the surface

The report generally believes that LINK represents one of the best risk/reward investment opportunities in the current cryptocurrency market, with several core arguments as follows:

• Major beneficiaries of the $30 trillion trend – The global financial system is transitioning to tokenization.
• The complete monopoly position of on-chain financial middleware – no competitors can provide the same level of technological reliability and institutional trust.
• Misunderstood assets – Despite having unparalleled integration and a dominant market share, the market capitalization is far below its strategic value.
• Realistic 20-30 times upside potential – In contrast, the objectively inferior benchmark asset XRP trades at a price 15 times higher than LINK.

Specifically, the report elaborates on three aspects of why LINK is currently undervalued.

1. RWA Wave Invisible Beneficiaries

Since 2024, the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market has grown by 2.5 times. BlackRock's BUIDL tokenized money market fund has reached a scale of $2 billion; traditional financial giants like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Charles Schwab are no longer pilot projects, but are now in actual deployment.

But how do tokenized U.S. Treasuries know the current interest rate? How do on-chain gold tokens verify physical reserves? How is the security and compliance of cross-chain asset transfers ensured?

They all need Chainlink. Everything depends on having a reliable data and interoperability layer.

2. Business monopoly, but undervalued

Chainlink is a true monopolist in its field:

• Over $24 trillion in on-chain transaction value has been realized through Chainlink.
• 85 billion USD Total Value Secured (TVS)
• Over 18 billion verification messages
• 50+ blockchain integrations, 500+ application integrations

No competitor can provide the combination of technological reliability, product breadth, compliance capabilities, and institutional trust that Chainlink offers. Once integrated, it becomes a critical infrastructure with high switching costs and self-reinforcing network effects.

In comparison, XRP's market capitalization is 15 times that of LINK, yet it does not have even one-tenth of LINK's actual value.

3. Narrative Reversal

For many years, LINK has been burdened with the negative narrative of "team dumping." However, the LINK reserve mechanism launched in August 2024 has brought about a change.

Previously: Chainlink Labs funded its operations by selling tokens, resulting in ongoing selling pressure.

Now: Hundreds of millions of dollars in business revenue are automatically converted into LINK purchases, creating continuous buying pressure.

With more expectations for cooperation, more institutions are expected to pilot production within the next 12-18 months, and verifiable on-chain revenue will surge significantly.

The market is still viewing LINK with outdated perspectives, while the fundamentals have undergone a fundamental shift. This cognitive gap is the source of significant investment opportunities.

Deployment Map of Chainlink by Global Financial Giants

The report also lists some key cooperation cases, especially with traditional financial giants.

1. SWIFT: In November 2024, use Chainlink CCIP to trigger on-chain token operations with traditional SWIFT messages.

• Participating institutions include: ANZ, BNP Paribas, Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank, Clearstream, Euroclear, Lloyds Bank, etc.; successfully simulated the transfer of tokenized assets between public chains and private chains.

2. JPMorgan Kinexys: In June 2025, JPMorgan's blockchain division Kinexys completed the first cross-chain delivery versus payment (DvP) settlement with Ondo Finance.

• Chainlink Role: CRE (Enterprise-Level Runtime Environment) coordinates workflows, and the CCIP protocol ensures the security of cross-chain messaging.

3. The White House recognition, technical and policy endorsement:

• White House Crypto Summit, founder Sergey Nazarov was invited to attend and have direct dialogue with the President and Cabinet officials.
• White House Digital Asset Report – Chainlink officially recognized as a core infrastructure of the digital asset ecosystem
• Chainlink has released detailed solutions for over 10 blockchain use cases for federal agencies.

The most critical point is that these are not isolated experiments; each successful pilot represents a use case. All these use cases bear the shadow of ChainLink, even if it may not be in the spotlight.

(Typical Enterprise Collaboration Case of Chainlink, AI Translation)

Not only oracles, the monopoly position of middleware

Many people still perceive Chainlink as just a "price oracle". In fact, Chainlink has built a complete blockchain middleware ecosystem, becoming an indispensable bridge connecting blockchain with the real world.

Its products cover five key areas:

1. Data

2. Provide market data streams (such as price feeds), proof of reserve, verifiable randomness, and ultra-low latency data streams.

3. These features ensure that blockchain applications can reliably access off-chain data, supporting a variety of scenarios such as financial applications, gaming, insurance, and more.

4. Compute

5. Provide off-chain computing capabilities (such as complex calculations implemented through Functions) and event-driven automation features.

6. This enables the blockchain to handle complex logic and computations without excessively consuming on-chain resources.

7. Cross-Chain Interoperability

8. Provides CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol) to support multi-network risk management.

9. CCIP enables the secure transfer of assets and data between different blockchains, solving the challenges of cross-chain communication.

10. Compliance

11. Provide an Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) for programming compliance requirements according to legal rules.

12. This is especially important for institutional users, helping them meet regulatory requirements.

13. Enterprise Integration Layer

14. Provide Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) to coordinate workflows between private and public chains.

15. CRE helps enterprises achieve seamless integration of blockchain and traditional systems, reducing friction and risk.

These are not independent products, but rather a collaboratively working system. When SWIFT uses Chainlink, they are not just using an oracle, but are connecting to a complete infrastructure.

The competitive advantage here is that other market participants can typically only cover one or two areas, while Chainlink is the only solution that covers all key areas.

The benefit of using ChainLink for institutions is that it can serve as the sole integration point, significantly reducing integration friction and risk.

This full-stack capability, combined with years of accumulated security records and institutional trust, constitutes a technological moat that is almost impossible to replicate.

How should LINK be valued reasonably?

Now we come to the most critical question: how much is LINK really worth?

The report used several independent valuation methods, all of which pointed to similar conclusions.

Method 1: Compare XRP, Relative Valuation Method

Taking XRP as an example, this "bank coin" created in 2012 has yet to realize its promised use cases, has seen almost no real institutional adoption, yet has a fully diluted market cap of $330 billion.

In contrast, Chainlink has been adopted by top global financial institutions, yet its market capitalization is only 1/15 that of XRP.

Assuming LINK is at least equivalent in value to XRP, the current market capitalization of XRP is 15 times that of LINK, providing investors with a highly attractive risk/reward opportunity.

If we consider Chainlink's significantly superior fundamentals, the valuation of LINK is more suitable for comparison with traditional financial companies (such as Visa and Mastercard), which have similar positioning in the payment processing and data infrastructure sectors.

Comparing with the market values of these companies, LINK has the potential for a 20-30 times increase.

Method 2: Traditional Company Logic, Market Share Method

By 2030, approximately $19 trillion of real-world assets will be tokenized globally.

Chainlink is expected to capture 40% of the market share of these assets as a "data pipeline" and "cross-chain bridge", servicing approximately $7.6 trillion in tokenized assets.

These assets will enable Chainlink to process approximately $3.8 trillion in transaction volume annually. With a gradually increasing fee rate (currently charging 0.005% per transaction), Chainlink's annual revenue is expected to reach $82.4 billion by 2030.

With an annual revenue of 82.4 billion USD and a price-to-sales (PS) ratio of 10, Chainlink's enterprise value is approximately 824 billion USD.

Assuming the total supply of LINK remains around 1 billion coins, a network value of 824 billion dollars implies a theoretical value of approximately 824 dollars per LINK. The current price is only around 22 dollars, which means there is about 38 times the potential.

Of course, this 38 times is a theoretical valuation from the translator's perspective, and any change in assumptions would lead to significant results.

Recent Catalyst ( Q3/Q4 )

LINK Reserve Mechanism

For many years, Chainlink has driven industry growth through substantial subsidized services, but this has also blurred its profit potential, forcing Chainlink Labs to sustain operations through token sales. The newly launched LINK Reserve mechanism will fundamentally change this situation:

• Capital flow reversal, hundreds of millions of dollars in off-chain enterprise revenue will automatically be used for market buybacks of LINK
• Market pressure shifts from sustained selling pressure to net buying pressure
• Confirmed ChainLink's enterprise-level profit potential for everyone.

Data Service Expansion

• Data Streams cover traditional financial assets: Official support for real-time pricing of US stocks and ETFs started on August 4, providing data support for tokenized funds, synthetic assets, and on-chain structured products.
• ICE Partnership: Announced on August 11 the integration of comprehensive data streams for foreign exchange and precious metals from Intercontinental Exchange, providing crucial support for institutional-level on-chain pricing.
• CCIP Launch on Solana: In May, CCIP was launched on the Solana mainnet, achieving cross-ecosystem settlement and messaging between EVM and SVM environments.

Product Function Upgrade: Privacy and Staking Rewards Need to Be Focused On

Privacy and permission features, including the launch of CCIP private transactions; meeting the confidentiality requirements for bank cross-chain transactions; Chainlink Privacy Manager, ensuring that sensitive data does not leak to public chains.

Privacy security is also a prerequisite for banks to transition from pilot to production using ChainLink.

Staking v0.2 and fee distribution are currently online, supporting more types of staking services.

After the future upgrade, user fees will be directly rewarded to stakers; as the data flow and CCIP transaction volume increase, staking rewards will significantly rise.

This is somewhat similar to the staking rewards after the Ethereum merge, but based on real enterprise-level revenue.

Conclusion

Chainlink provides one of the most asymmetric risk-return profiles in all financial markets.

No competitor can match Chainlink's advantages in integration breadth, technical reliability, regulatory compliance, and institutional trust. The highly anticipated pilot projects will expand into production environments in the next 12 to 18 months. Each integration deepens its moat through high switching costs, network effects, and entrenched compliance processes.

In terms of finance, Chainlink offers a diversified, recurring, and scalable revenue stream, covering CCIP transaction fees, institutional data subscription services, proof of reserve certification, and automation services, creating a lasting growth engine directly related to the adoption of tokenized assets. With global tokenization expected to reach several trillion dollars, the addressable market is immense and has yet to be effectively penetrated.

Despite having these fundamental advantages, LINK is still a mispriced asset, with its valuation resembling a speculative project rather than a monopolistic financial infrastructure provider.

As the tokenized economy matures and Chainlink integration shifts to production environments, the market will be forced to significantly reassess LINK to reflect its systemic importance, revenue potential, and irreplaceable role in the global financial system.