Chainlink Labs Appoints Diem CTO Dahlia Malkhi as CRO

Chainlink Labs, a US-based operator of an online contract management platform, announced Tuesday the appointment of Dr. Dahlia Malkhi, former Diem Association Chief Technology Officer, as its Chief Research Officer.

In her new role, Malkh will manage Chainlink’s data science and advanced analytics departments and help support the growth of the data oracle network.

Dr. Malkhi joins Chainlink Labs from the Diem Association, where she was the Chief Technology Officer, lead maintainer and lead researcher at Novi. Before working at Diem, Dr. Malkhi co-founded VMware Research where she served as a principal researcher and spent more than ten years at Microsoft Research. Besides that, Dr. Malkhi served as a tenured associate professor of computer science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has authored over 100 publications with contributions to wide aspects of the security and reliability of distributed systems.

Sergey Nazarov, CEO of Chainlink Labs, commented about Malkhi’s appointment and said: "As Chainlink Labs continues to build the secure infrastructure necessary to increase Web3 adoption and create a world powered by cryptographic truth, we are breaking new ground in the areas of cryptography and mathematics and need the best and brightest minds to join us in solving some of the world's hardest problems. Dahlia is one of the foremost experts on decentralized systems consensus, a critical factor in ensuring security, scalability, and performance across the blockchain ecosystem, making her an ideal addition to the Chainlink Labs research team."

Leveraging Blockchain for Businesses and Enterprise Apps

The latest hiring is part of Chainlink’s recent appointments to ensure its business growth. Late last year, Chainlink hired Mike Derezin, former Vice President at LinkedIn, as its Chief Operating Officer. Also, in December last year, Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO, joined Chainlink Labs as a Strategic Advisor, to help Chainlink Labs — the developer behind blockchain oracle solution provider Chainlink — to achieve its multi-chain interoperability goals.

In May last year, Chainlink joined the Hedera governing council, a group of diverse organizations responsible for stewarding the Hedera network (a decentralized public network where anyone can build applications). Most of the existing council members are large firms such as Avery Dennison, Boeing, Dentons, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, EDF, eftpos, FIS, Google, IBM, LG, Magalu, Nomura, Shinhan Bank, Standard Bank, Swirlds, Tata Communications, UCL, WIPRO and Zain. 

Joining the Hedera Governing Council made Chainlink the default oracle provider for enterprise applications. In a centralized world, software programs typically use external feeds for data like stock prices or exchange rates. In the decentralized world, blockchains use oracles, which are similar to feeds. Chainlink provides decentralized oracles and connects smart contracts to a wide range of off-chain data sources and computations, such as asset prices, IoT devices, web APIs, payment systems, and many more.