LINK, the native token of the Chainlink decentralized oracle network platform, is leading the market this morning in a bullish start to the week for cryptocurrencies.

The token spiked to $10.93 earlier today—a level not seen in May 2022 just before the collapse of the Terra ecosystem dragged the markets into a prolonged crypto winter—before backtracking to $10.01 by press time.

At the time of this writing, LINK is up 8% over the past 24 hours, and almost 38% over the last week, according to data by CoinGecko.

Chainlink's impressive performance may be attributed to the growing popularity of its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), the recently launched tech-stack upgrade aimed at simplifying cross-chain transactions.

Introduced in July this year with early adopters including Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, as well as DeFi lending protocols Aave and Synthetix, CCIP created a standard communication system between different, often incompatible, blockchains.

Last month, Chainlink also integrated CCIP into the Coinbase-incubated Ethereum layer-2 network Base, letting developers build secure cross-chain applications and services.

Beyond Chainlink, the wider cryptocurrency market has continued to enjoy a bullish uptick. Per data from CoinGecko, the overall crypto market cap rose nearly 3%, hitting $1.2 trillion. Of the top ten cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin leads the gains with 4%, followed by Solana (3.2%), Ethereum, and Binance Coin (2.1%).

Bitcoin rose 2% overnight and is now trading at roughly $30,500.

Chainlink CCIP goes enterprise

By simplifying token transfers between blockchains, and reducing complexity compared to third-party bridges, CCIP offers users an enhanced level of protection—a factor that could play a crucial role in the adoption of digital assets given the susceptibility of cross-chain bridges to security breaches and malicious activities.

Notably, CCIP also aims to reach beyond the realm of crypto, opening traditional finance access to crypto.

To that end, Chainlink has been working with major financial institutions, including Swift, BNY Mellon, Citigroup, and BNP Paribas, conducting several blockchain interoperability tests aimed at enabling the transfer of tokenized assets.

Most recently, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC)—the leading post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry—became the latest addition to the list of Chainlink’s enterprise partners integrating CCIP.

DDTC’s collaboration with Chainlink is part of Swift’s interoperability project, where Swift used CCIP to facilitate secure cross-chain messaging and token transfers, while DTCC served as a token issuer and central securities depository (CSD).

Edited by Liam Kelly.