In the past two months, several notable crypto platforms have switched their cross-chain connectivity provider, leaving LayerZero in favor of Chainlink’s CCIP protocol. The catalyst was a major hack in the spring, and the list of companies following suit keeps growing—recently, the Mantle network joined with its $2.5 billion portal.
How the Mantle Migration Is Going
The team announced a change in the underlying technology for the Super Portal payment portal, which was developed in partnership with the Bybit exchange. Until now, the tool operated on the Omnichain Fungible Token standard owned by LayerZero, but is now switching to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Token. The portal’s task remains the same—transferring the MNT token between the Ethereum and Solana networks, and the team has stated its intention to connect additional blockchains in the future.
The amount of capital involved in this move exceeds $2.5 billion—the current market value of MNT, Mantle ecosystem’s native token. With this amount, the total volume of all confirmed transitions from LayerZero to the Chainlink protocol has surpassed $7.24 billion.
Why Cryptocurrencies Need Bridges Between Networks
LayerZero and Chainlink CCIP serve the same technical function—they give digital asset owners a way to transfer tokens from one blockchain environment to another. This capability is vital for the market: activity is spread across many competing networks, not concentrated in one place, which would be simpler from a security perspective.
For this reason, such protocols have long been considered the riskiest link in the entire crypto ecosystem. A single breach can open the door for attackers to assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars in one go. Over the years, dozens of such incidents have occurred, with total losses running into the billions.
How It All Started: The $292 Million Breach
There is a clear starting point for the current wave of migrations. In the spring, the Kelp protocol suffered a large-scale attack that cost $292 million—the vulnerability was in the bridge configuration running on LayerZero technology. After this incident, the entire industry sharply increased its focus on how securely different projects have configured similar mechanisms.
Kelp itself responded quickly, announcing plans to move more than $1.5 billion of its assets to Chainlink infrastructure. This decision was followed by a series of similar moves from other market players. The Solv protocol moved $700 million in tokenized bitcoin. The Re project transferred $475 million. The Kraken exchange moved $330 million in wrapped assets to the new platform. Lombard transferred over $1 billion. Virtuals Protocol added another $700 million, and Yuzu Money—$54.5 million.
What Will Happen During the Migration Itself
During the migration, Super Portal will be completely suspended—downtime is scheduled from July 9 to 15. However, MNT tokens that users already hold on Ethereum and Solana, as well as all activity on the Byreal and Bybit platforms, will remain untouched—holders of these assets will not notice any disruption in their wallets.
One of the project’s advisors noted an important point: as tokenized financial assets evolve from a theoretical idea into a real tool worth billions of dollars, the transport layer connecting different blockchains can no longer be considered a secondary concern.
What Advantages the New Scheme Offers
After the migration is complete, the security of MNT transfers will be handled by Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network. In addition to improved security, the company gains direct control over the token’s liquidity pools and transfer settings—this is especially important in light of Mantle’s plans to expand MNT’s presence to new blockchains and tokenized asset markets in the future.
What Is Behind This Wave of Decisions
Several major players simultaneously abandoning the same infrastructure partner in favor of its competitor is rare in the crypto industry. Replacing a key technology platform almost always involves significant operational challenges and costs, so projects only take such a step when there are truly compelling reasons.
A single incident with Kelp triggered a chain of decisions that, in just a few months, led to more than $7 billion flowing between two competing infrastructure providers. This shift clearly shows that the reliability of blockchain bridges is no longer a narrow technical detail, but has become one of the decisive criteria when choosing infrastructure—even for mature, long-running projects with billions in locked funds.
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