Imam al-Bukhari (رحمة الله عليه) said that the soundest of all chains of hadith transmission was “Malik, from Nafi’, from Ibn ‘Umar.”
The scholars of hadith call it the Golden Chain, and there are eighty narrations with this chain in the Muwatta’.
Imam Malik (رحمة الله عليه) composed al-Muwatta’ in the course of forty years, having started with ten thousand narrations until he reduced them to their present number of fewer than 2,000.
Source: Haq Islam