Capabilities Overview
At the core of the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) is the concept of Capabilities. A capability is a modular, decentralized service that performs a specific task. Think of them as the individual "bricks" that you can use to build custom workflows.
Each capability is powered by its own independent Decentralized Oracle Network (DON), which is optimized for that specific task, ensuring security and reliable performance.
Invoking Capabilities via the SDK
As a developer, you do not interact with these capability DONs directly. Instead, you invoke them through the developer-friendly interfaces provided by the CRE SDKs (Go and TypeScript), such as the evm.Client, the solana.Client, or the http.Client. The SDK handles the low-level complexity of communicating with the correct DON and processing the consensus-verified result, allowing you to focus on your business logic.
Chain Families
CRE supports blockchain capabilities across multiple chain families — groups of networks that share the same virtual machine, serialization format, and address encoding. The chain family determines which SDK client you use and how payloads are encoded.
| Chain Family | Networks | SDK Client | Payload Encoding |
|---|---|---|---|
| EVM | Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and many more | EVMClient / evm.Client | ABI (viem / go-ethereum) |
| Solana | Solana Mainnet, Solana Devnet | SolanaClient / solana.Client | Borsh |
Additional chain families may be added in future releases.
Available Capabilities
This section provides a high-level, conceptual overview of the capabilities currently available in CRE.
- Triggers: Event sources that start your workflow executions.
- HTTP: Fetch and post data from external APIs with decentralized consensus.
- Confidential HTTP: Make privacy-preserving API calls with enclave execution, secret injection, and optional response encryption.
- EVM Read & Write: Interact with smart contracts on EVM-compatible blockchains with decentralized consensus.
- Solana Write: Write verified workflow results to Solana programs via the Keystone Forwarder.
All execution capabilities automatically use built-in consensus to validate results across multiple nodes, ensuring security and reliability.