Cathie Wood backs LayerZero as ZRO faces $25M token unlock. 2026-09-05 12:24:01 Key takeaways. * Cathie Wood of ARK Invest endorsed LayerZero, projecting nine-figure annual recurring revenue from cross-chain messaging. * LayerZero handled 44% of cross-chain volume in the first half of 2026, compared with 41% for Circle's CCTP. * LayerZero implements new fee structure on Sept. 1 directing excess revenue toward ZRO purchases, while 23.6 million ZRO tokens unlock Sept. 19-20 worth approximately $25 million. Cathie Wood of ARK Invest has endorsed LayerZero, with ARK researcher Lorenzo Valente projecting the protocol could generate nine-figure annual recurring revenue from its cross-chain messaging business. LayerZero handled approximately 44% of cross-chain volume during the first half of 2026, compared with about 41% for Circle's CCTP, according to figures cited in ARK's research. Wood stated that investors are underestimating LayerZero's role in interoperability. ZRO has gained roughly 36% over the past month but trades near $1.06, remaining below its 2024 peak. The endorsement arrives as LayerZero implements a new fee structure directing excess revenue toward ZRO token purchases, while the protocol faces an upcoming token unlock and competition from Chainlink's CCIP for institutional cross-chain traffic. LayerZero implements fee structure and ZRO buyback program on Sept. 1. On Sept. 1, LayerZero introduced a fee of up to 2 basis points on OFT transfers made through Stargate, capped at $250 per transaction. The protocol also increased the minimum LayerZero Labs Executor charge to $0.25 per transaction. Under the new pricing model, excess Stargate revenue is directed toward ZRO purchases. LayerZero acquired Stargate in 2025 and has been using bridge revenue for monthly ZRO purchases. Between September and November 2025, Stargate generated roughly $2.4 million in revenue, with $1.2 million used for open-market ZRO purchases. The company stated that Stargate revenue will increasingly flow toward buybacks. The strategy builds on the earlier Stargate-to-ZRO consolidation, which eliminated hundreds of millions of remaining STG tokens. LayerZero faces 23.6 million ZRO token unlock around Sept. 19-20. Around Sept. 19-20, approximately 23.6 million ZRO allocated to core contributors and strategic partners are scheduled to unlock. At current prices, the unlock is worth roughly $25 million and represents about 6.7% of the circulating float, according to DefiLlama's unlock data. ZRO currently has roughly 353 million tokens circulating out of a maximum supply of 1 billion. Chainlink CCIP wins mantle and Lombard migrations from LayerZero. Chainlink's CCIP has won notable migrations from LayerZero. Mantle moved its $2.5 billion-plus MNT cross-chain infrastructure from LayerZero to Chainlink, while Lombard shifted more than $1 billion in Bitcoin-backed assets after reviewing bridge security. The moves followed scrutiny around the roughly $292 million KelpDAO exploit, although LayerZero maintained that its underlying protocol itself was not compromised. ARK Invest has financial interests in both LayerZero Labs and ZRO. ARK's investment in LayerZero was disclosed earlier alongside backing from Citadel Securities and Tether. Faq. What did Cathie Wood say about LayerZero? Cathie Wood of ARK Invest stated that investors are underestimating LayerZero's role in cross-chain messaging. ARK researcher Lorenzo Valente projected the protocol could generate nine-figure annual recurring revenue from its interoperability business. When is the LayerZero ZRO token unlock scheduled? Approximately 23.6 million ZRO tokens allocated to core contributors and strategic partners are scheduled to unlock around Sept. 19-20. At current prices, the unlock is worth roughly $25 million and represents about 6.7% of the circulating float. How does LayerZero's new fee structure work? On Sept. 1, LayerZero introduced a fee of up to 2 basis points on OFT transfers made through Stargate, capped at $250 per transaction. The protocol also increased the minimum LayerZero Labs Executor charge to $0.25 per transaction. Excess Stargate revenue is directed toward open-market ZRO purchases. Disclaimer: The information on this page may come from third-party sources and is for reference only. It does not represent the views or opinions of Gate and does not constitute any financial, investment, or legal advice. Virtual asset trading involves high risk. Please do not rely solely on the information on this page when making decisions. For details, see the Disclaimer.

Stargate expands to Injective. - Published 1 hour ago on March 5, 2026 - Hassan Maishera On Tuesday, the Injective team announced via a blog post that Stargate, the omnichain liquidity protocol built on LayerZero, has launched full support for Injective. With this support, users can now bridge assets directly to Injective from 80+ blockchains through Stargate's unified interface, and for the first time, wrapped Ether (wETH) is natively accessible within the Injective ecosystem. Stargate is the leading cross-chain liquidity layer, purpose-built to move assets across blockchains instantly and with guaranteed finality. Since its launch, the protocol has facilitated over $65 billion in total transfer volume, processing more than $1 billion per week across its network. With Stargate now supporting Injective, users across Ethereum, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and dozens of other networks have a direct, low-friction route into the Injective ecosystem. This matters because liquidity depth is what enables the products Injective is designed to power: orderbook-based perpetuals, structured products, and RWA markets. The most consequential asset unlocked by this integration is wETH. Wrapped Ether is one of the highest-liquidity assets in all of DeFi, and its arrival on Injective enables entirely new market structures that were not previously possible. Trading pairs denominated in wETH can now go live on Injective's native orderbook exchange. Lending and borrowing markets can be built around wETH collateral, giving users the ability to put their ETH exposure to work while remaining active across Injective's broader DeFi ecosystem. Injective is an open, interoperable layer-one blockchain for building powerful DeFi applications. Injective uniquely provides plug-and-play financial infrastructure primitives, such as a high-performance on-chain decentralized exchange infrastructure, decentralized bridges, oracles, and a composable smart contract layer with CosmWasm. INJ is trading at $3.06, up 2.5% in the last 24 hours. Hassan Maishera Hassan is a Nigeria-based financial content creator that has invested in many different blockchain projects, including Bitcoin, Ether, Stellar Lumens, Cardano, VeChain and Solana. He currently works as a financial markets and cryptocurrency writer and has contributed to a large number of the leading FX, stock and cryptocurrency blogs in the world.

The Wormhole Foundation has announced its intent to submit a competing bid to acquire Stargate Finance, challenging LayerZero's $110 million token-swap proposal.