Chainlink’s McCormick envisions AI-driven blockchain transactions in a multi-chain future

Chainlink Labs is betting that the next wave of blockchain growth won’t come from crypto-native builders alone. It’ll come from Wall Street. And the person tasked with making that happen is Andrew McCormick, who joined the oracle network on June 4 as Head of Institutional and Market Development. McCormick, who previously ran eToro’s US operations, has a straightforward thesis: artificial intelligence will make it trivially cheap to launch new blockchain networks, and the resulting proliferation of chains will create enormous demand for the plumbing that connects them. That plumbing, in Chainlink’s view, is its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, better known as CCIP. The multi-chain argument, reframed McCormick has been making this case publicly through a series of media appearances, including a YouTube interview on June 30 and a spot on the All-In Crypto Podcast in late July. The messaging has been consistent: interoperability isn’t a nice-to-have feature for institutions. It’s a prerequisite. Why institutions care about CCIP For a bank or asset manager considering tokenized securities, the nightmare scenario is liquidity fragmentation. If a tokenized Treasury bond lives on one...