Leading oracle provider, Chainlink, has onboarded partner integrations at a rate of more than 1.4 daily during 2021 so far.

According to the archives of Chainlink’s ecosystem portal, 281 different crypto projects have announced integrations during 2021 so far, with the calendar currently 201 days into the year.

With all time third-party Chainlink integrations currently totaling 650, that means 43% of the project’s partners were onboarded this year. By contrast, roughly 250 partners integrated with Chainlink during all of 2020.

While many of Chainlink’s partners are little-known projects in their nascent stages, some of the crypto sector’s leading players have recently teamed up with the oracle provider, including Huobi’s ECO Chain, the Hedera Governing Council, and Alchemix.

An increasing number of projects are also utilizing Chainlink’s Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which offers decentralized applications a secure and automated solution for generating randomization.

Related: Chainlink integration means metaverse can truly reflect the real world

For example, blockchain-powered game Infinity Skies announced it had teamed up with Chainlink on July 20 to distribute its in-game “loot” in a fair manner.

“Since loot is probabilistic and NFTs hold real value to players, it is imperative that the minting of loot cannot be ‘gamed’,” Infinity Skies stated.

“Chainlink VRF provides the Infinity Skies’ smart-contract responsible for chest opening with direct access to a tamper-proof and auditable random number to determine outcomes when opening chests.”

Crypto developers have come up with a wide array of novel applications for Chainlink’s VRF functionality, with PancakeSwap also integrating VRF for its decentralized lottery application last week. Other projects are using VRF to ensure prizes and rewards are issued in a verifiably fair fashion.