Kraken Follows Kelp DAO, Switches From LayerZero to Chainlink CCIP

US-based crypto exchange Kraken has announced that it has switched its cross-chain provider from LayerZero to Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), adding itself to a growing list of exchanges that have made the change following the Kelp DAO exploit in April. Kraken has stated that it is ousting its existing cross-chain provider and migrating to Chainlink CCIP as its existing cross-chain infrastructure to ensure that Kraken Wrapped Bitcoin (kBTC) and all future wrapped tokens are secured. The company further added that it picked Chainlink CCIP because it offers strict security, along with enterprise-grade infrastructure and risk management requirements. 

More Protocols Move Away From LayerZero After April Exploit

After the Kelp DAO exploit, LayerZero accepted responsibility and issued an “overdue apology”, saying that the protocol had not executed communications properly over a period of three weeks. The protocol acknowledged that its internal RPCs (remote procedure calls) were under attack and having their “source of truth poisoned” while its external RPC providers were simultaneously being hit by a denial-of-service attack, but pointed to Kelp's configuration as a direct result of their single-DVN (Decentralised Verifier Network) setup.

Earlier this month, Kelp DAO had announced that it would be migrating its staking token, rsETH, to the Chainlink oracle platform, post the $292 million (roughly Rs. 2,805 crore) hack it suffered from in April. The protocol had placed the blame for the attack on LayerZero's cross-chain infrastructure. While LayerZero argued that the hack occurred because of an inadequate setup tied to Kelp's decentralised verifier network (DVN), which relied on a single LayerZero DVN as the only verified path, rather than requiring multiple checks of cross-chain transactions. LayerZero had advised against such a setup. 

Kraken and Kelp DAO are not the only ones that are making this switch; Solv Protocol also announced on May 7 that it would be migrating from LayerZero to CCIP for $700 million (roughly Rs. 6,726 crore) in tokenised Bitcoin. Along with them, on-chain reinsurance protocol Re also announced that it's migration of $475 million (roughly Rs. 4,564 crore) in total value locked (TVL) from LayerZero to Chainlink. 

As per a blog by MEXC, more than $3 billion (roughly Rs. 28,824 crore) in TVL have been migrated to CCIP since the Kelp exploit, while numerous protocols have abandoned bridging using LayerZero. In another blog post by Lido, the world's largest Ethereum liquid staking protocol said “Chainlink's defense-in-depth model acts as the definitive standard for cross-chain interoperability.”

As per data by CoinGecko, Chainlink's native token, $LINK, witnessed no reaction in prices and stands at a market low of around $10 (roughly Rs. 960), down 80 percent from its 2021 peak. Meanwhile, LayerZero's native token $ZRO declined 30 percent since the April hack and is down more than 80 percent from its 2024 peak.