LayerZero (ZRO)
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Price of LayerZero today in real time
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Historical price evolution of LayerZero
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LayerZero Labs was co-founded in April 2021 by Bryan Pellegrino —former professional poker player and technology entrepreneur—, Ryan Zarick as CTO and Caleb Banister. The project emerged whilst the founders were developing an NFT game and experienced the limitations of existing bridges between Ethereum and BNB Chain: they were slow, expensive and insecure. During this initial month, the company closed a seed round of $2 million.
On 16th September 2021, LayerZero published the article "LayerZero - An Omnichain Interoperability Protocol" on Medium, coining the concept "omnichain" for the first time in the Web3 ecosystem. In January 2022, the technology materialised with the launch of Stargate Finance, the first cross-chain bridge based on LayerZero, which reached $3,000 million in TVL in less than 10 days.
The project's growth attracted significant investments: in March 2022, LayerZero completed a Series A round of $135 million led by a16z, Sequoia Capital and FTX Ventures, reaching a valuation of $1,000 million. In April 2023, a Series B round of $120 million led by a16z and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Christie's, Franklin Templeton and Circle Ventures, elevated the valuation to $3,000 million, becoming one of the highest valuations in crypto history for a project without a token in circulation.
In January 2024, LayerZero launched its V2 version with improvements in standardisation of communications between blockchains and modular security architecture. 20th June 2024 marked the debut of the ZRO token with an airdrop to early adopter users. From a total supply of 1,000 million ZRO, 8.5% (85 million ZRO) was distributed amongst approximately 1.28 million eligible wallets. The Sybil filtering process eliminated 803,273 wallets (59%) identified as automated bots, generating controversy although it was praised for its rigour.
In January 2025, LayerZero collaborated with Tether to launch USDT0, an omnichain version of USDT built on LayerZero's OFT standard, which in its first year processed more than $70,000 million in cross-chain transfers across 23 networks. In August 2025, LayerZero proposed acquiring Stargate Finance for $110 million to unify both ecosystems. In February 2026, Tether made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs, whilst Citadel Securities also invested in ZRO. LayerZero announced the launch of "Zero", a new Layer 1 blockchain with founding partners that include Citadel Securities, DTCC, ICE (parent company of NYSE) and Google Cloud.
LayerZero functions as an omnichain interoperability protocol that enables smart contracts on any blockchain to communicate directly with contracts on other blockchains without relying on centralised intermediaries. Its architecture is structured around three main components: the Endpoints, which are immutable contracts deployed on each supported blockchain and act as permanent points for sending and receiving messages; the Ultra Light Nodes (ULNs), specialised contracts that validate messages by receiving only the necessary proof data without requiring synchronisation of complete block histories; and the Decentralised Verifier Networks (DVNs), which are networks of independent verifiers such as Google Cloud and Chainlink that each application can freely select to configure its own security stack.
The protocol implements the OFT (Omnichain Fungible Token) standard, which allows the same token to exist as the original asset across multiple blockchains through a burn and mint mechanism: when a user transfers tokens between chains, these are burnt on the source blockchain and automatically minted on the destination blockchain, thus avoiding the creation of wrapped versions of the original asset. The native ZRO token fulfils a dual function within the ecosystem: it serves as a governance mechanism for the protocol through on-chain referendums held every six months to determine parameters such as system fees, and acts as a utility token for paying fees in applications built on the protocol, with a maximum supply established at 1,000 million units.
Data verified against external sources. Some values may have changed since the last update.