Solv Protocol Migrates to Chainlink CCIP from LayerZero

Bitcoin-centric DeFi platform Solv Protocol announced on Thursday that it will migrate to Chainlink from LayerZero, citing security concerns following industry incidents. The protocol will phase out LayerZero’s bridging support for SolvBTC and xSolvBTC on Corn, Berachain, Rootstock, and TAC, designating Chainlink’s CCIP as its official cross-chain infrastructure solution for over $700 million in assets, according to Solv’s announcement post.

Migration Rationale

Solv stated that it reviewed its existing bridges and determined that CCIP provided “the strongest security assurances through its secure-by-default architecture, native risk controls, and proactive monitoring.” The protocol noted that CCIP is widely considered the “gold standard” for decentralized interoperability and is officially recognized by the White House as critical digital asset infrastructure.

In its announcement, Solv emphasized the sensitivity of cross-chain bridges in DeFi: “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. 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.”

Industry Context: Kelp DAO Exploit

Solv’s migration follows a $292 million exploit on LayerZero-powered Kelp DAO last month. According to reports, 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.

The exploit created significant bad debt on the Aave protocol. LayerZero and Kelp DAO subsequently blamed each other over the bridge configuration. LayerZero criticized Kelp DAO’s 1-of-1 decentralized verifier network (DVN) setup, stating it had warned against such a configuration. Kelp DAO countered that the single-verifier setup was LayerZero’s default onboarding recommendation, noting that 47% of LayerZero apps use the single-verifier setup. Earlier this week, Kelp announced it would also drop LayerZero in favor of Chainlink for cross-chain infrastructure.

Solv did not mention Kelp’s exploit or migration in its announcement, instead focusing on its own security assessment.

Solv’s Security History

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