Chainlink (LINK) has surpassed its previous bullish target and hit a new all-time high of $8.40. The altcoin market has been pushing higher every week as Bitcoin continues to trade within a tightening range, and the recent surge came from Chainlink (LINK).

After breaking the $5 mark, LINK's price skyrocketed nearly 100% in just a few days and finally reached a new all-time high of $8.40. With this significant push, LINK has overtaken EOS and Crypto.com (CRO), securing a spot in the top ten cryptocurrencies on CoinMarketCap.

Investors are now curious whether Tezos (XTZ) will continue to follow LINK's lead, and expect other altcoins to also follow LINK's upward trend. LINK has proven to be one of the strongest performers in the cryptocurrency market in recent years. It has broken its previous all-time high of $5 and soared to $8.50 at a speed of 85%.

Earlier this year, LINK was priced below $1.76, and now it is trading at around $8.60. On July 15th, it briefly touched $8.90, marking a historical high and an annual increase of more than 520%. With the price rise, its market capitalization also ranks among the top ten cryptocurrencies globally, currently in 8th place. However, the gap between LINK and LTC and BNB is not significant, and there is potential for variability in the future.

As Chainlink's oracle price continues to soar to new highs, is there a bubble? After such a strong rebound in LINK, investors will begin to consider whether the price is in a bubble. Many altcoins, particularly those related to the DeFi market, have risen several tens or hundreds of times since Bitcoin's price dropped to $3,750 on March 12th.

The price action of LINK and other cryptocurrencies has led some investors to believe that a bubble has started. However, it is important to carefully examine the fundamentals of LINK to understand whether the surge is driven by FOMO or more fundamental factors.

CoinMetrics has pointed out several data points that support LINK's price. For example, the total number of active addresses and the number of transactions have been increasing, indicating that the number of people holding (and, more importantly, using) LINK is growing.

The number of entities deeply involved in Chainlink (companies, investors, node operators) is also increasing. Following in the footsteps of Binance, Huobi has started running a node to provide price data to the network.

In addition, the Chinese Blockchain Service Network integrated with Chainlink in June and currently operates 135 nodes. These nodes (or oracles) are crucial because they feed information from the outside world into smart contracts, allowing multiple applications to be used in the DeFi space. To become an oracle, users must stake a certain amount of LINK, which may be penalized for providing incorrect information. In exchange for their efforts, oracle operators receive LINK token rewards.

Although Chainlink's on-chain activity and increasing number of nodes indicate the network's healthy growth, other factors may also be at play. For example, the demand for DeFi-enabling coins like LINK continues to grow, as it provides the highest interest for high-yielding farmers in protocols like Aave.

Decentralized finance protocols can have a significant impact on other cryptocurrencies. For example, Basic Attention Token (BAT) rebounded to nearly $0.31 from June 19th to July 2nd, with trading volume almost hitting record highs as most of its circulating supply is locked in large yards. This is because the Compound reward mechanism makes BAT the most commonly used ERC-20 token in DeFi, as COMP tokens are given as interest generated from lending BAT tokens.

With the continued growth of the DeFi sector, the demand for dependency-based and decentralized oracles that can provide external information to smart contracts is also increasing. This makes DeFi applications (such as insurance and gambling) more secure and trustless. If the demand for DeFi tokens increases, it may help increase the LINK price in a more direct way, especially considering that oracles need LINK to participate in the network.

Currently, Chainlink (LINK) has exceeded BinanceCoin (BNB) and Litecoin (LTC) in terms of market capitalization, becoming the 8th largest cryptocurrency, according to data from CoinMarketCap. LINK's market capitalization has surged 9% to $8.17, surpassing BNB and LTC, whose market capitalizations are $2.84 billion and $2