Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced on Thursday that it has switched its cross-chain service provider from LayerZero to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, joining a number of protocols that have made the switch following April’s Kelp DAO exploit.
Kraken he said is phasing out its existing cross-chain provider and migrating to Chainlink CCIP as its exclusive cross-chain infrastructure to secure Kraken Wrapped Bitcoin (kBTC) and all future wrapped tokens.
The company added that it chose Chainlink CCIP because it “offers enterprise-grade infrastructure with rigorous security and risk management requirements.” These include certificates, a secure default design, 16 independent nodes, and native rate limits.
LayerZero has been under scrutiny for some time Kelp DAO exploit in April, when entities suspected of having ties to the North Korean Lazarus Group stole liquid tokens worth approximately $292 million.
LayerZero released “overdue apology” on May 9, stating that he had done a “terrible job of communicating over the last three weeks.”
She admitted that her internal RPCs (Remote Procedure Calls) were attacked and their “source of truth was poisoned”, while external RPC providers were simultaneously hit with a denial of service attack, but blamed Kelp’s configuration as a direct consequence of their configuration with a single DVN (Decentralized Verifier Network).
LayerZero confirmed that no other applications were impacted, and as of April 19, over $9 billion in combined assets had been transferred via the protocol.
Other protocols migrate from LayerZero
Kraken is not alone in making a change. Kelp DAO has stated that it is also in the works migration to Chainlink’s CCIP and that it burned 117,132 of the hacker’s rsETH as part of the recovery process this week.
Related: Kelp DAO Considers Reopening Withdrawals After rsETH Burn
Dissolution protocol announced On May 7, it migrated from LayerZero to CCIP as the official cross-chain infrastructure for $700 million in tokenized Bitcoin.
Meanwhile, the onchain reinsurance protocol Re announced On May 8, it announced the migration of the total value of $475 million locked from LayerZero to the Chainlink protocol.
TVL amounted to over $3 billion moved to CCIP since the Kelp hack, while many protocols have suspended bridging using LayerZero, According to to MEXC.
The world’s largest Ethereum liquid staking protocol, Lido, also uses CCIP. “Chainlink’s Defense in Depth Model is the ultimate standard for cross-chain interoperability,” it states explained in Thursday’s blog post.
Comparison of CCIP and LayerZero. Source: Lido
No reaction to token prices
There has been no reaction to the prices of Chainlink’s native token, LINK, which remains at a bear market low of around $10, down 80% from its 2021 high.
However, the value of LayerZero’s native ZRO token has fallen by more than 30% since the April hack and is down more than 80% from its all-time high in 2024, According to this CoinGecko.
Cointelegraph reached out to LayerZero for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
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