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BitGo Moves $7.3 Billion in Wrapped Bitcoin From LayerZero to Chainlink
14 Aug 2026, 13:47
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Crypto custody firm BitGo is shifting roughly $7.3 billion of Wrapped Bitcoin from LayerZero to Chainlink's cross-chain protocol, the largest move yet in a wave of institutional migrations following LayerZero's April security crisis.
Crypto custody firm BitGo is moving roughly $7.3 billion of Wrapped Bitcoin from LayerZero to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, marking the largest single transfer yet in a broader wave that has shifted nearly $14.6 billion of institutional crypto assets away from LayerZero since a major hack in April. BitGo said security was the deciding factor, and Chainlink's CCIP will now become the exclusive cross-chain provider for wBTC and all future assets the company issues. CEO Mike Belshe said the move reflects a simple principle the company has built around: security comes first.
BitGo is following roughly half a dozen other major players that made the same switch earlier this year, including Kraken, Mantle, Lombard, Solv Protocol, Virtuals and Aave, meaning a meaningful share of the industry's cross-chain infrastructure is now concentrating around a single provider. The migrations trace back to a three-week security crisis that began in April, when attackers linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group stole roughly $292 million from the rsETH bridge belonging to liquid restaking protocol Kelp DAO, exploiting compromised infrastructure rather than a flaw in Kelp's own smart contracts.
LayerZero's initial response placed responsibility on Kelp's choice to run a single-verifier security setup rather than the network's recommended multi-verifier model. Kelp disputed that framing, arguing LayerZero staff had approved the configuration and never flagged it as risky, and noting that the setup wasn't unique to Kelp, since LayerZero's own data showed nearly half of active contracts on the network were running the same single-verifier arrangement. In early May, LayerZero reversed its position, acknowledging it had "made a mistake" allowing its verification network to secure high-value assets under that configuration, banning the setup outright and moving every integration onto stricter multi-verifier defaults going forward.
That admission, more than the hack itself, is widely seen as the real trigger for the exodus that followed: LayerZero had conceded that nearly half its integrations shared the same exposure that led to Kelp's losses, and that its own team had signed off on the risky configuration in the first place. Chainlink's architecture relies on an independently coded risk management network designed specifically to avoid the single-verifier failure mode that cost Kelp $292 million. The consolidation carries its own tradeoff, however: as more of the industry's most security-sensitive assets move onto a single provider, the system becomes more dependent on that one provider continuing to operate reliably, rather than spreading risk across multiple independent infrastructures where a single failure might be contained.
BitGo is following roughly half a dozen other major players that made the same switch earlier this year, including Kraken, Mantle, Lombard, Solv Protocol, Virtuals and Aave, meaning a meaningful share of the industry's cross-chain infrastructure is now concentrating around a single provider. The migrations trace back to a three-week security crisis that began in April, when attackers linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group stole roughly $292 million from the rsETH bridge belonging to liquid restaking protocol Kelp DAO, exploiting compromised infrastructure rather than a flaw in Kelp's own smart contracts.
LayerZero's initial response placed responsibility on Kelp's choice to run a single-verifier security setup rather than the network's recommended multi-verifier model. Kelp disputed that framing, arguing LayerZero staff had approved the configuration and never flagged it as risky, and noting that the setup wasn't unique to Kelp, since LayerZero's own data showed nearly half of active contracts on the network were running the same single-verifier arrangement. In early May, LayerZero reversed its position, acknowledging it had "made a mistake" allowing its verification network to secure high-value assets under that configuration, banning the setup outright and moving every integration onto stricter multi-verifier defaults going forward.
That admission, more than the hack itself, is widely seen as the real trigger for the exodus that followed: LayerZero had conceded that nearly half its integrations shared the same exposure that led to Kelp's losses, and that its own team had signed off on the risky configuration in the first place. Chainlink's architecture relies on an independently coded risk management network designed specifically to avoid the single-verifier failure mode that cost Kelp $292 million. The consolidation carries its own tradeoff, however: as more of the industry's most security-sensitive assets move onto a single provider, the system becomes more dependent on that one provider continuing to operate reliably, rather than spreading risk across multiple independent infrastructures where a single failure might be contained.