Solv Protocol Migrates $700M Assets From LayerZero to Chainlink

Bitcoin-centric DeFi platform Solv Protocol announced on Thursday that it will migrate to Chainlink from LayerZero, following a major security incident involving the latter. In a post, Solv Protocol wrote it will phase out LayerZero’s bridging support for SolvBTC and xSolvBTC across Corn, Berachain, Rootstock, and TAC, designating Chainlink’s CCIP as its official cross-chain infrastructure solution for over $700 million in assets.

Migration Rationale and Chainlink Selection

“In light of recent industry events, Solv reviewed its existing bridges and found that CCIP provided the strongest security assurances through its secure-by-default architecture, native risk controls, and proactive monitoring,” the team wrote. Solv added that CCIP is widely considered the “gold standard” for decentralized interoperability and is officially recognized by the White House as a critical digital asset infrastructure.

“Cross-chain bridges remain one of the most sensitive and high-risk areas in DeFi, with insecure bridges bringing systemic risk to the entire industry,” Solv wrote. “Recurring industry-wide security incidents have made this explicitly clear and reinforced the standard that all projects require the interoperability solution with the most robust security and decentralization.”

Kelp DAO Exploit Context

Solv’s migration follows the $292 million exploit on LayerZero-powered Kelp DAO last month. The attacker, suspected to be North Korea’s Lazarus Group, exploited a single-verifier configuration of an Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) bridge to drain 116,500 rsETH from Kelp DAO.

LayerZero and Kelp DAO shifted blame onto one another following the exploit. LayerZero criticized Kelp DAO’s 1-of-1 decentralized verifier network (DVN) setup, stating it had warned against such a configuration. In rebuttal, Kelp DAO said that such a setup was LayerZero’s default onboarding recommendation, pointing out that 47% of LayerZero apps use the single-verifier setup. Earlier this week, Kelp announced that it will drop LayerZero as its cross-chain infrastructure provider in favor of Chainlink.

The exploit’s impact led to significant bad debt on the Aave protocol. Solv did not mention Kelp’s exploit or the subsequent migration in its announcement, but explained its need to relocate to a platform it deemed more secure.

Prior Security Incident

Solv itself was exploited in March this year, when approximately $2.7 million was drained from one of its Bitcoin Reserve Offerings (BRO) token vaults.