Most Influential: Sergey Nazarov

If there’s been one crypto executive who has been singularly fixated, from day one, on bringing the entire global financial system onchain, it’s Sergey Nazarov, the co-founder of the decentralized oracle network Chainlink.

Since Chainlink Labs was established in 2017, distinct from the Chainlink protocol, Nazarov has consistently expanded the network’s scope from “just an oracle” for decentralized finance (DeFi), to a broad suite of tools meant to power virtually every corner of on-chain finance — from tokenization to cross-chain connectivity to enterprise-grade data infrastructure.

“Chainlink enabled over $27 trillion in onchain transaction value and is powering over 70% of all DeFi and more than 80% on top chains like Ethereum. But the real achievement was proving that advanced smart contracts can operate across many chains and real-world systems, reliably, at scale, and in production,” Nazarov told CoinDesk.

Earlier this year, the 37-year-old entrepreneur Nazarov framed 2025 as the “final stage” of blockchain adoption, arguing that governments, banks and asset managers are starting to build a global financial system on the “Chainlink standard”: a framework for secure data, interoperability and settlement across chains.

As the year comes to an end, his prediction seems far less ambitious and a lot closer to reality. In 2025, Chainlink partnered with the who’s who of financial giants, such as Swift, DTCC, and UBS and even the U.S. government to move everything from macroeconomic data to real-world assets onto blockchains. Nazarov’s protocol became the essential connective layer between the digital asset universe and the legacy finance world, bringing Chainlink that much closer to its “endgame.”

Next year, Nazarov sees even more adoption by traditional financial institutions. “We’re about 30% of the way to global onchain adoption. In 2026, I expect that number to move meaningfully higher as institutions and DeFi finally operate in one unified environment,” Nazarov said.

Unsurprisingly, Grayscale Research recently described Chainlink as the “essential infrastructure” for tokenized finance, noting that the protocol’s LINK — the token with a market cap of nearly $10 billion — offers diversified exposure to crypto’s infrastructure layer for investors.

In 2023, CoinDesk called Nazarov the man who can rock both a plaid shirt and a three-piece suit, a metaphor for his role bridging two worlds. In 2025, with Chainlink solidifying its role as the critical “plumbing” for tokenized assets and cross-chain financial infrastructure as both worlds converge, that symbolism feels even more apt.

Sergey Nazarov is speaking at CoinDesk’s upcoming Consensus 2026 conference in Miami next May.