Steve Ellis is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Chainlink Labs, the company behind the Chainlink decentralized oracle network. He built the engineering foundation that lets smart contracts pull real-world data, such as prices and weather, onto the blockchain. Ellis has led Chainlink’s technical team since 2014, when he and Sergey Nazarov started the project under the name SmartContract.com, before it was rebranded to Chainlink in 2017.
Who Is Steve Ellis?
Steve Ellis earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from New York University in 2010, where he also worked as a teaching assistant in the Computer Science department. After graduating, he spent close to three years, from July 2010 to March 2013, as a software engineer at Pivotal Labs. There, he worked with ‘Extreme Programming’, an agile method built around shipping small, working pieces of software quickly rather than waiting for long release cycles.
Before Chainlink existed, Ellis co-founded Secure Asset Exchange in June 2014 and served as its CTO until January 2016. The platform gave users a way to trade assets on a decentralized marketplace without a central authority controlling the exchange, and Ellis built a conversion tool that let people move value across different blockchains and automate asset purchases.
That same year, Ellis and Sergey Nazarov started the company under the name SmartContract.com, which was later renamed Chainlink. His path from Secure Asset Exchange to Chainlink is one of several founder stories worth exploring in our crypto personalities hub.
Steve Ellis’ Career and Contributions
As CTO of Chainlink Labs, Ellis has overseen the engineering behind Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network since the company’s founding. He and Nazarov published the original Chainlink whitepaper in September 2017, laying out a system in which independent node operators supply external data to smart contracts without relying on a single source.
Chainlink went live on the Ethereum mainnet in 2019, starting with a single price feed. The network’s price feeds are now used by lending platforms, decentralized exchanges, and stablecoin issuers that need accurate, tamper-resistant data.
Ellis has also pushed Chainlink’s technology into areas outside DeFi, including enterprise data verification, supply chain tracking, and cross-chain communication through the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol.
Steve Ellis’ Views and Positions
Ellis mostly avoids making price predictions or market calls, the kind of talk common among other crypto executives. Instead, he focuses his public comments on Chainlink’s technical direction and long-term goals. In a Chainlink Labs “Block Stories” short film published on Chainlink’s official website, Ellis explained why the team builds on verifiable data instead of trust: “Once you cryptographically commit to something, you’re not relying on promises. You’re relying on mathematics.”
Ellis has also spoken about scaling Chainlink’s team and operations as adoption grew, saying in the same Block Stories segment that the company sought people willing to work on hard technical problems rather than simply expanding headcount for its own sake.
Steve Ellis in the News
Ellis appeared at the SmartCon 2023 in Barcelona in October 2023, one of several Chainlink Labs speakers addressing the network’s expansion into enterprise and cross-chain use cases. At the event, Ellis joined Chirag Dhull, Chainlink Labs’ Head of Product Marketing, for a conversation covering how to scale a decentralized system without sacrificing security or reliability.
The two also discussed what it takes for Web3 projects to reach product-market fit and the kind of technical trade-offs involved in pushing a growing network like Chainlink past its current limits. As Chainlink continues to expand into tokenized real-world assets, Ellis’s engineering team remains responsible for the underlying data layer on which much of that growth depends.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Here are quick answers to what most people search for first about Steve Ellis.
Who did Steve Ellis co-found Chainlink with?
Ellis co-founded Chainlink with Sergey Nazarov, who now serves as CEO of Chainlink Labs. The two started the project together in 2014 under the name SmartContract.com before rebranding to Chainlink and publishing its whitepaper in September 2017.
What did Steve Ellis do before Chainlink?
Before Chainlink, Ellis worked as a software engineer at Pivotal Labs from July 2010 to March 2013, focused on extreme programming. He then co-founded Secure Asset Exchange in June 2014, a decentralized asset marketplace, where he served as CTO until January 2016.
What does Steve Ellis do at Chainlink Labs?
As CTO, Ellis oversees the engineering behind Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network, the system that supplies smart contracts with external data like prices and event outcomes. He has held this role since Chainlink’s founding in 2014.
What is Steve Ellis’s educational background?
Ellis graduated from New York University in 2010 with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. He also worked as a teaching assistant in NYU’s Computer Science department during his time there.
Is Chainlink the same thing as LINK?
Chainlink is the network and the technology Ellis and Nazarov built, while LINK is the token used to pay node operators for supplying data to that network. Chainlink Labs is the company led by Ellis and Nazarov that develops the software behind the Chainlink network.
