Solv Protocol Will Dump LayerZero, Migrate $700M Tokenized Bitcoin Tech to Chainlink

One other crypto venture is leaving blockchain interoperability protocol LayerZero after the fallout from the $292 million Kelp DAO exploit intensified scrutiny round cross-chain bridge safety.

In an announcement Thursday, Solv Protocol mentioned it’s migrating the infrastructure that powers greater than $700 million in tokenized Bitcoin from LayerZero to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), following what it described as a broader safety overview of cross-chain techniques.

The protocol mentioned it’s deprecating LayerZero bridge help for Corn, Berachain, Rootstock, and TAC whereas standardizing its infrastructure round Chainlink’s CCIP.

“Safety is the muse of every thing we construct at Solv, and our migration to Chainlink CCIP reinforces that dedication on the highest degree,” Solv Protocol Chief Know-how Officer Will Wang mentioned in an announcement. “By totally securing SolvBTC and xSolvBTC cross-chain transfers with CCIP, we’re offering customers the very best assurance that confirmed, defense-in-depth infrastructure secures all cross-chain transfers.”

In response to Wang, the migration positions Solv to scale with “the reliability and institutional-grade safety assurance the market calls for.”

Launched in 2021 on the Ethereum community, Solv Protocol is a DeFi platform constructed round SolvBTC—a token tied to the worth of Bitcoin—that lets customers deploy wrapped BTC and different Bitcoin-based belongings throughout a number of blockchains to earn yield.

The transfer comes weeks after attackers drained roughly $292 million from infrastructure tied to Kelp DAO, a DeFi protocol that used LayerZero’s bridge expertise. Solv didn’t straight point out Kelp DAO in its announcement, as a substitute referring broadly to “current cross-chain hacks noticed within the trade” alongside an intensive safety overview.

“In accordance with this strategic migration, we’re decreasing our danger publicity on our present bridging stack by deprecating SolvBTC and xSolvBTC LayerZero bridging help for Corn, Berachain, Rootstock, and TAC to as a substitute standardize on Chainlink CCIP, essentially the most battle-hardened and time-tested interoperability infrastructure throughout all blockchains,” the corporate wrote.

Whereas cross-chain bridges let customers transfer belongings between blockchains, they’ve additionally grow to be one in all crypto’s most ceaselessly attacked items of infrastructure as a result of they typically depend upon difficult verification techniques and maintain giant quantities of locked funds.

Earlier outstanding assaults on blockchain community bridges embrace the $622 million exploit of Axie Infinity’s Ronin network bridge in 2022, and the $230 hack of Indian crypto change WazirX in 2024. Each assaults have been finally linked by investigators to North Korean state-sponsored hacking teams.

In April, LayerZero blamed the Kelp DAO assault on North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and mentioned the venture relied on a single-verifier setup regardless of suggestions to make use of a number of validators.

This week, Kelp DAO disputed that account and accused LayerZero of approving the configuration tied to the exploit. Kelp then introduced plans to revamp its cross-chain system round Chainlink CCIP, the place transactions are verified by means of a number of impartial validators as a substitute of a single verifier.

“We’re proud to work with the Solv group and help their migration to Chainlink CCIP because the standardized method that their wrapped Bitcoin belongings are securely transferred cross-chain,” Chainlink Labs Chief Enterprise Officer Johann Eid mentioned, in an announcement. “Solv’s migration to CCIP displays a broader shift throughout the DeFi trade of main protocols adopting Chainlink to ship the very best degree of safety required to deliver the following billion customers on-chain.”