BitGo is replacing its WBTC cross-chain solution, which was previously based on LayerZero, with Chainlink's CCIP

BitGo has officially announced that it will be transitioning its WBTC cross-chain infrastructure, valued at approximately $7.3 billion, from LayerZero to Chainlink's CCIP. This brings the total amount of assets migrating from LayerZero to Chainlink this year to roughly $1.45 billion. The direct cause of this exodus was the Kelp DAO bridge hacking incident that occurred earlier this year, which was based on LayerZero. The exploit, valued at $29.2 million, shook industry-wide confidence in LayerZero's bridge configuration. Following this, Mantle, Kelp, Lombard, Solv Protocol, Virtuals, Re, and Kraken, among others, subsequently announced their transition to CCIP, and BitGo's addition has further accelerated this trend. WBTC is a tokenized asset designed to track the value of Bitcoin and is used for various purposes, such as DeFi transactions, lending, and collateral, on other blockchains like Ethereum. According to CoinMarketCap, WBTC's market capitalization is approximately $7.4 billion, and the amount being transitioned in this move is $7.3 billion. BitGo plans to adopt Chainlink's Cross-Chain Token standard and will use CCIP as the default cross-chain infrastructure for all future assets it issues. Notably, in this structure, BitGo will maintain control over the token contracts while directly managing cross-chain transfer limits and various settings. BitGo adopted LayerZero in 2024 with the aim of deploying on Avalanche and BNB Chain, but at that time, each cross-chain transfer required validation from BitGo's own validators, as well as approval from either LayerZero or Polyhedra. CCIP-based WBTC pools are already registered in the Chainlink directory for Ethereum and the Ronin network. However, BitGo has not disclosed a specific timeline for the completion of the entire migration. This announcement is considered an example of how industry standards for cross-chain infrastructure security are being raised following major hacking incidents.