BitGo shifts WBTC cross-chain duties to Chainlink, nearing $15 billion in migrations
Tech & Launches ·
BitGo is dropping LayerZero in favor of Chainlink's CCIP to handle cross-chain transfers for wrapped bitcoin, adding billions more to a wave of protocol switches triggered by a bridge exploit earlier this year.
According to Coindesk, BitGo plans to make Chainlink its sole cross-chain infrastructure provider for WBTC, a token designed to mirror bitcoin's value while enabling use in decentralized finance on non-Bitcoin blockchains. The switch brings the combined total of announced LayerZero-to-Chainlink migrations to $14.5 billion, based on figures cited in the report.
The pattern traces back to a $292 million exploit that hit Kelp DAO's bridge, which ran on LayerZero, prompting closer examination of how such bridges are configured across the industry. In the aftermath, a string of other platforms — among them Mantle, Lombard, Solv Protocol, Virtuals, Re and Kraken — opted to shift their own cross-chain setups to Chainlink's CCIP.
Under the new arrangement, BitGo intends to apply Chainlink's Cross-Chain Token framework uniformly across WBTC deployments and default to CCIP for any assets it introduces going forward. Despite handing off transfer infrastructure, BitGo keeps authority over its token contracts and continues to set parameters such as rate limits and other transfer conditions.
BitGo had originally brought LayerZero on board in 2024 to extend WBTC onto additional chains, starting with Avalanche and BNB Chain, in a setup that needed sign-off from either BitGo's verifier alongside LayerZero or Polyhedra for each transfer. Chainlink's own registry already shows CCIP-supported WBTC liquidity pools live on Ethereum and Ronin, though the timeline for finishing the wider rollout has not been disclosed.
Left open is exactly when BitGo will complete the transition across all chains, and whether additional protocols still running on LayerZero will follow the same path toward Chainlink.