Lombard joins LayerZero exodus as $4 billion in assets switch to Chainlink's bridge

Some $4 billion in assets has moved or is being moved to Chainlink’s CCIP bridge, a way to transfer tokens and data between blockchains, as the systems' security faces heightened scrutiny after $292 million was drained from Kelp’s LayerZero-powered equivalent.

Decentralized finance protocol Lombard is the latest firm to join the shift. The protocol is deprecating LayerZero and migrating more than $1 billion in bitcoin -backed assets to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, it said.

Lombard issues two bitcoin-backed tokens, LBTC and BTC.b. The firm said the migration followed an internal security review after the April exploit.

The move follows similar actions by DeFi protocols Kelp DAO, Solv Protocol, Re and, more recently, crypto exchange Kraken. The migrations represent roughly $4 billion in total value locked.

CCIP competes with LayerZero and other cross-chain messaging protocols, which route assets across networks and have faced renewed scrutiny because of the value they can secure.

Lombard will first migrate assets across blockchains including Solana, Etherlink, Berachain, Corn and TAC. It is also ending LayerZero usage on Morph and Swell.

Lombard said CCIP gives it independent node operators, built-in rate limits and audited infrastructure. The firm is also adopting Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token standard, which lets tokens move across chains through a burn-and-mint model.

"We are witnessing a continued flight to safety across the industry,” Johann Eid, chief business officer at Chainlink Labs, said.

LayerZero did not immediately respond to a request for comment.