LayerZero’s $110M Heist: The Blockchain Brawl That Shook DeFi! 😱

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One does not simply amble into the acquisition of a cross-chain platform, you know. It is a fraught business, a sort of financial rug-pull performed with top hats and monocles. And so it was that the firm known as LayerZero, having apparently misplaced its favourite protocol some years prior, decided to shell out a cool $110 million to get it back from the clutches of a DAO. It was the sort of sum that makes aunts in Tunbridge Wells faint clean away. 💰

With one of the highest participation rates in its history, the Stargate (STG) DAO approved the acquisition on with a 95% majority vote. Over 7.5 million veSTG tokens were cast by more than 15,000 addresses. As part of the agreement, the DAO was shut down, and governance will be moved to the LayerZero (ZRO) ecosystem.

The Stargate DAO has approved our acquisition of Stargate (STG).

We’ve spent four years building the rails to reinvent how value moves. Today, we accelerate our network effects.

LayerZero is better money technology.

Stargate is the interface for value transfer.

– LayerZero (@LayerZero_Core) August 24, 2025

A Most Lucrative Shuffle

Under the final agreement, a rather sporting arrangement was struck. Stargate stakers, those patient souls, are to be thrown a bone consisting of fifty percent of the protocol’s revenue for the next six months. The other half, in a move that suggests a touching faith in one’s own product, is to be funneled into buying back the family silver-ZRO tokens. Additionally, holders of the now-superseded STG tokens will be permitted to swap them for ZRO at a rate so fixed and precise, it would make a Swiss watchmaker weep with joy. 🧐

This is a structural change that aligns Stargate’s cross-chain liquidity infrastructure with LayerZero’s wider interoperability strategy as governance and operations move under the LayerZero umbrella.

The Also-Rans and Their Futile Gestures

But the path to this happy union was not without its hurdles. LayerZero’s initial offer was apparently about as popular as a raincloud at a garden party, criticised for terminating the staking program and undervaluing the whole shebang. This discontent opened the door to a veritable parade of rival suitors, like something from a bad novel.

Wormhole (W), Axelar (AXL), and Across Protocol joined the fray immediately, with Wormhole even waving an all-cash bid of $120 million about like a man trying to hail a cab in a downpour. A superior offer, you might think! But no. The community, in a display of sentimentality over sense, chose the devil they knew. Strategic alignment, they called it. Poppycock, I say. 🤨

Before being spun out as a DAO in 2022, LayerZero Labs initially incubated Stargate in 2021. LayerZero’s reacquisition of Stargate solidifies its ecosystem and improves its standing in the cross-chain messaging and liquidity space in a time when interoperability is still a major DeFi bottleneck,

Now that the acquisition is complete, focus is on how LayerZero will incorporate Stargate’s infrastructure and whether the move will provide long-term benefits to both ZRO holders and Stargate’s loyal supporters.

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2025-08-25 06:58