BitGo is moving $7.4B in WBTC to Chainlink's CCIP after a $292M KelpDAO exploit, bringing total LayerZero-to-Chainlink migration announcements to roughly $14.6B.
Blockchain Infrastructure News
BitGo announced on Aug. 4 that it will replace LayerZero with Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as the exclusive cross-chain standard for Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).
WBTC currently carries a market capitalization of approximately $7.4 billion, making it the largest wrapped Bitcoin token by that measure and the biggest single asset yet to announce a switch from LayerZero to Chainlink (LINK). The company also said CCIP will serve as the default cross-chain infrastructure for all future assets BitGo issues.
WBTC is a tokenized version of Bitcoin (BTC) designed to track its value. Unlike native Bitcoin, it operates as an ERC-20 token and can be used in decentralized finance applications on other blockchains for trading, lending, and collateral. It represents about 45% of the total market capitalization of all wrapped Bitcoin tokens, a position it has held since launching in 2019 as the first product of its kind.
BitGo originally selected LayerZero in 2024 to expand WBTC across blockchains. Its initial deployments used LayerZero on Avalanche and BNB Chain, with a configuration requiring both BitGo's own verifier and either LayerZero or Polyhedra to approve each cross-chain transfer. That arrangement is now being replaced entirely.
A Wave of Migration After the KelpDAO Exploit
The switch is part of a broader industry move that began after a $292 million exploit drained KelpDAO's LayerZero-powered rsETH bridge earlier this year. That bridge was set up with a one-of-one verifier configuration, meaning a single Decentralized Verifier Network operated by LayerZero Labs was the only entity authorized to approve cross-chain messages. Attackers compromised the off-chain infrastructure supplying data to that single verifier, forged an approval message, and drained the bridge of $292 million. The attack exposed a structural vulnerability in how LayerZero's configurable security model could be used.
A subsequent review of the broader LayerZero ecosystem found that 47% of LayerZero OApp contracts were using the same one-of-one configuration, according to Dune Analytics data. The finding amplified concern across projects using LayerZero and accelerated migration planning across the industry. LayerZero has since updated its system to prevent single-verifier setups, but the reputational damage from the KelpDAO incident continued to drive departures.
Other projects that had already announced migrations to Chainlink before BitGo's Aug. 4 announcement include Mantle, Kelp, Lombard, Solv Protocol, Virtuals, Re and Kraken. Kraken's kBTC is itself a wrapped Bitcoin token, making WBTC's announcement a continuation of a trend already underway in the wrapped Bitcoin market specifically. Combined, those prior announcements covered approximately $7.24 billion in assets. Adding WBTC's $7.4 billion pushes the cumulative total of announced LayerZero-to-Chainlink migrations to roughly $14.6 billion.
Related Article: DTCC Taps Chainlink for 24/7 Tokenized Collateral Network
What Chainlink CCIP Offers and Why It Was Chosen
Chainlink says each CCIP bridge is secured by a minimum of 16 independent node operators that have undergone security review and have a documented track record of uptime and reliability. That stands in contrast to the configurable and potentially minimal verifier setup that LayerZero allowed, which gave projects flexibility but also introduced risk if that flexibility was misused. Chainlink's CCIP is also the only cross-chain protocol that holds both SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 compliance certifications, two standards commonly required by institutional counterparties when evaluating infrastructure risk.
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe said in a statement that security has always been central to how the company operates. "Chainlink CCIP gives us a proven, institutionally adopted interoperability standard that aligns with the controls, reliability, and risk management our clients expect from BitGo," Belshe said. The company noted that CCIP's built-in rate limits and configurable transfer controls are designed to act as automatic circuit breakers, containing damage from any potential incident before it can spread across chains.
The structure of the migration also preserves BitGo's control over its token contracts. Under the Chainlink arrangement, BitGo retains full ownership of the WBTC contract and can set its own parameters for cross-chain transfer limits and access controls. Chainlink's registry already lists CCIP-enabled WBTC pools active on Ethereum and Ronin. BitGo did not specify a completion date for the broader migration across all supported chains.
WBTC launched in 2019 and at its peak held more than $15 billion in circulation—a point at which it represented the entire wrapped Bitcoin market. Its total supply has remained relatively stable in recent months, even as BTC's price has declined since September 2025. The token's market share has fallen as competitors, including Coinbase's cbBTC, have entered the space, but at $7.4 billion in market capitalization, WBTC remains the category's dominant asset by a wide margin.
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