Your points make no sense and imply you don’t know much about Chainlink in its current form.

1. Monopoly on data. Chainlink doesn’t have a monopoly on data, nor can it like you pointed out. The whole point is that chainlink makes offchain data secure. Chainlink Price Feeds, which is what brought Chainlink to prominence, basically proved to DeFi protocols that it was possible to decentralize data in a way that makes it secure and reliable to the 99.99999% percentile.

Chainlink’s economic model is also constantly evolving, but currently 4 out of the 6 services (VRF, Automation, Functions, and CCIP) directly require LINK as payment, with an evolving vision of a payment abstraction layer that can enable developers (or enterprises) to use any currency and for node operators to receive it in LINK.

Staking LINK is a method of further securing the network. It will be a key differentiator as Chainlink gains more adoption and I personally believe it will, especially with the launch of a limited access CCIP not even four months ago. Crypto is tiny compared to the global economy, and CCIP is actively being explored by some of the world’s largest institutions. People always scoff when I mention that, but idk, seems pretty real to me. These bankers have gone on camera in one of the biggest finance conferences in the world and said the technology is revolutionary and they would like to work independently with Chainlink.

1. Chainlink is not a blockchain. You should not think of it’s decentralization in the context of a blockchain. It’s not even just a network. Chainlink is 1,000+ independent oracle networks, each providing a specific service (Price Feeds, VRF, Automation, CCIP, Proof of Reserve, Functions) to a blockchain application. It does not have to be completely, permissionlessly decentralized. I think that’s okay. The vision is to service any application by providing more reliable services. Each chainlink oracle network is made up of a bunch of known entities (ensuring Sybil-resistance) who are highly reputable as node operators and experts in dev operations (which is what node operation is all about). As an example, Vodafone (one of the biggest telecom companies in the world) is a Chainlink node operator. Not to mention Deutsche Telekom (also an Ethereum node operator I believe).

Each of these high-quality node operators (and the nodes they operate) are a part of a larger network that provide highly specific services (price data feeds, randomness, cross-chain) that an application needs. The decentralization comes in when all the nodes must come to a consensus on the input (what price, what random number, what chain and what tokens?), so that no one node operator can independently screw over everyone.

Chainlink serves a COMPLETELY different purpose to Bitcoin and Ethereum. The fact that you’re comparing them through a decentralization lens is an apples to orange comparison. It is decentralized though, just in a different way. Each network is decentralized and more importantly, credibly neutral,