Chronicle Labs

Chronicle Labs is the development entity behind Chronicle Protocol, a decentralized oracle service that provides on-chain data for blockchain applications. The company was founded in January 2022 by Niklas Kunkel. Kunkel's journey in the crypto space began at IBM Research working on the Hyperledger blockchain. In 2017, he joined the founding team of MakerDAO, a prominent decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol. While at MakerDAO, Kunkel identified the absence of a crucial piece of infrastructure: oracles, which are needed to bring external data onto the blockchain. This necessity led him and his team to build the first oracles on the Ethereum network to support the creation of DAI, the first decentralized stablecoin on Ethereum.

Born from the needs of MakerDAO, the oracle protocol, now known as Chronicle Protocol, has been operational since 2017, exclusively securing billions in assets for MakerDAO and its ecosystem. Recognizing the broader market's need for more efficient and transparent oracle solutions, Kunkel founded Chronicle Labs to spin out the protocol and offer it to all Web3 developers. In March 2025, the company announced a $12 million seed funding round led by Strobe with participation from Brevan Howard and others to accelerate product development.

Chronicle Protocol addresses key limitations of existing oracles, such as high costs, lack of transparency, and scalability issues. It serves Web3 builders, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, and applications requiring reliable external data. The business model involves clients paying for oracle services through an on-chain subscription and payment system, allowing them to fund their oracle operations directly. The company's core product is the Scribe Oracle architecture, a proprietary technology that uses a novel application of Schnorr Signatures to aggregate data from multiple validators. This design significantly reduces the gas costs associated with updating oracle data on-chain, by over 60% on Layer 1 blockchains, making it more cost-effective. A key differentiator is the protocol's emphasis on verifiability; it features an on-chain dashboard called 'The Chronicle' that allows anyone to trace the origin of every piece of data from end-to-end, creating a censorship-resistant and high-integrity data layer. The protocol is blockchain-agnostic and supports numerous chains, including Ethereum, Polygon zkEVM, and Arbitrum. Its network is supported by a community of trusted validators like Etherscan, Gnosis, and Infura.

Keywords: Niklas Kunkel, Chronicle Protocol, blockchain oracle, MakerDAO, decentralized finance, DeFi infrastructure, Web3 data, on-chain data, smart contract oracles, verifiable data, oracle scalability, Scribe architecture, Schnorr signatures, gas efficiency, Ethereum oracles, real-world assets, RWA oracles, Polygon zkEVM, crypto infrastructure, data verifiability, blockchain data provider, decentralized oracle network