Multichain, omnichain, and interoperability are all buzzwords you would likely have heard if you've spent enough time hanging out in the crypto trenches.

The real question is: what do they even mean?

Yes, as you are probably aware, there are plenty of marketing grifts in this space that just love a good buzzword to justify valuations that surpass that of some small nations.

Try sticking AI in your project name and see for yourself!

‍

However, when it comes to multichain, omnichain, and interoperability, there is actually some real substance to be found.

These are words that have the potential to change the crypto landscape as we know it and vastly improve the way we operate within it.

Not everything here is a scam, my friends!

Any serious conversation involving these words can’t go far without mentioning LayerZero and what these guys are cooking up.

For this reason alone, it pays to wrap your degenerately degraded brains around what they’re up to and where the future of magical internet beans is headed.

What is LayerZero?

As stated in the docs, LayerZero is an open-source, immutable messaging protocol designed to allow for the creation of fully interoperable, multichain applications.

‍

In layman's terms, this means that applications supported by the LayerZero tech can send information to other supported applications irrespective of the chains they exist on.

By providing this omnichannel messaging ability, LayerZero solves a long-standing issue in the crypto world.

That issue is that there are a shitload of different chains out there with a multitude of awesome applications that are completely isolated to the chains they exist on.

This brings us to another crypto buzzword: liquidity fragmentation.

This fragmentation of liquidity refers to the fact that all of these applications exist within their own ecosystems, aka the chains they are built on, and the value that these applications hold, which is in many ways walled off from the rest of the crypto sphere.

‍

As can be seen in the image above, $87.74 billion in total value is locked across the entire DeFi sector alone. The problem is that this value can’t move freely from chain to chain or network to network.

LayerZero provides a solution to this.

Until now, bridges have been needed to transfer value from one chain to another, and these bridges have many issues of their own.

Despite the huge improvements that have been made in bridge technology, they are still held back by a relatively cumbersome user experience and some serious concerns about security.

Multiple billions in value have been stolen over the past few years due to bridge hacks, and they have quickly established themselves as one of the biggest security risks in crypto.

Much of this risk comes from bridges relying on a single network to verify the messages sent from one chain to the next.

When this verifier network is compromised, every application built on that network is compromised, causing huge value losses and sending users and builders straight to their local McDonald's job openings website.

‍

LayerZero solves these interoperability issues in many different ways.

How does LayerZero work?

The simplest way to understand the first important aspect of the LayerZero protocol is to understand the use of endpoint contracts deployed on the chain of choice.

Once a LayerZero endpoint contract is deployed on a chain, applications on that chain can seamlessly communicate with other chains with an endpoint.

Chains can execute functions with other endpoint contracted chains, including sending messages from the source blockchain, configuring security and execution settings, quoting cross-chain gas costs, and debugging/resending failed message attempts.

All of these functions are made possible thanks to LayerZero’s Omnichain Application (OApp) and Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standards.

The OApp standard can be thought of as a universal messaging mechanism that allows data to be sent and received across different chains. This data can be anything related to smart contracts and, therefore, covers just about every task performed by a blockchain network.

The OFT standard allows fungible tokens to be transferred from one chain to another without wrapping or using a middle chain. This is done by burning the tokens on the sending chain and minting them on the receiving one—simple in principle but genius in practice!

A few recent examples of the OFT standard being used can be seen by Dogwifhat ($WIF), which has utilized this tech to expand from Solana onto the Base network, and Sandbox ($SAND), which is now deployed natively on Ethereum, BNB, and Base.

It is worth mentioning that an impressive 84 different chains currently have LayerZero endpoint contracts deployed. A full list of those chains can be found here.

‍

The next important aspect that makes LayerZero so game-changing is the security improvements that come from deploying it on your chain.

Modular Security is the term for the security upgrades that come with the LayerZero tech, and this is done by using Decentralized Verifier Networks (DVNs).

Applications that don’t utilize LayerZero tech are limited by having to use the same network to verify their cross-chain messages. We’ve already covered the problems of this with bridges.

Thanks to DVNs, applications now have access to what is known as a security stack, which essentially consists of a variety of verifiers, some required and some optional, that can be used to verify their cross-chain messages.

This eliminates the dreaded single point of failure problem that can come from relying on a single verifier.

An additional benefit is that developers can pick and choose which verifier networks they want to use to check their messages. When newer and better verification techniques arise, they can instantly upgrade their applications to use the new and ditch the old.

There are currently 35 different DVNs available for use by LayerZero supported applications, and a full list of them can be found here.

‍

The final piece of the LayerZero puzzle is permissionless execution.

The best way to truly understand this is to incorporate the knowledge you have hopefully already acquired by reading this far and examine the overall flow of transactional data across the LayerZero protocol.

It all starts when a message is sent from one network to another, both of whom have LayerZero endpoint contracts deployed.

The message that the application has chosen to allocate to this task is verified by the selected DVNs. Once verified, the message can then be executed.

This execution is performed automatically by the application's chosen executor, whose task is to send the message once it has been verified.

In doing so, the executor abstracts away the need to pay for gas on the destination chain and allows the user to pay for this gas using the gas token on the chain they are sending from.

This execution process is permissionless because anyone can develop their own executor in just a few lines of code. If this executor should, for whatever reason, vanish, messages can still be executed in a permissionless manner.

With all this knowledge of the inner workings of the LayerZero protocol now burnt onto the surface of your brain, you should now be able to make sense of the otherwise complicated diagram below, which shows this process visually.

Maybe you’re a right-curver after all, anon.

The LayerZero ($ZRO) Token and Tokenomics

Now that we are up to speed on the LayerZero tech and how it works, it’s time to dive into the $ZRO token.

At the time of writing, the $ZRO token is rapidly approaching its all-time high of around $5.29 (give or take a wick or two). With a total token supply of 1 billion, there are currently around 112 million tokens on the market, which represents around 11% of the total in circulation.

At its current, very close to all-time high price, full token dilution gives a valuation of a cool $5.25 billion, and the current circulating supply puts the market cap just shy of $590 million. This begs the question of inflation and future token unlock schedules.

According to data from token.unlocks.app and cryptorank.io, the next major unlock will take place on June 20th, 2025, when 24.68 million more $ZRO tokens will hit the market, representing 2.47% of the total token supply.

Further unlocks will continue at this rate each subsequent month until all tokens are on the market sometime in late 2027.

‍

As far as token allocation is concerned:

• 32.2% were given to strategic partners, with a one-year cliff followed by a 4% per month unlock schedule over a two-year period.
• 25.5% went to core contributors with the same unlock schedule as the strategic partners allocation.
• 25% went to the community.
• 9.5% have been allocated to the ecosystem and growth.
• 3.8% given to future initiatives.
• 4% tokens repurchased with the same unlock schedule as both strategic partners and core contributors.

How to buy the LayerZero $ZRO token?

Now, the beauty of an omnichain token like $ZRO is that it is very easy to add some to your bags. It’s available on just about every chain you can think of and most major exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kucoin, and Bybit.

‍

For those who prefer to live on-chain (myself included) you can pick some up on just about every DEX out there on your blockchain of choice.

Personally I like to use an aggregator like LlamaSwap to ensure I am getting as close to the best price as possible.

It’s also worth your time to take a closer look at some of the 200+ applications that have already been built on LayerZero as these will likely be the apps that are paving the way toward the future interoperable world of crypto we have all longed for.

Closing thoughts

Just as the internet gave us the previously unimaginable world of communication and information transfer that we now take for granted, LayerZero looks to bring the same level of game-changing tech to crypto.

By merging all chains into a seamless, interoperable soup of value, crypto will finally be able to stand alongside and even surpass the current traditional finance mechanisms and communication systems we all use on a daily basis.

At the end of the day, the way to improve crypto’s fabled user experience problem is through abstraction, and LayerZero does exactly that.

The ability to build basically any application imaginable, whether it be DeFi, gaming, DePin, RWA, or anything in between, means that developers will be foaming at the mouth with the sheer number of possibilities this technology can unlock.

This is some pretty exciting stuff for everyone, from the left-curve, over-leveraged gambling addicts to the right-curve, high-tech DeFi nerds and those who have no idea where they sit on this spectrum.

It warrants following closely, as the implications are huge.

There will surely come a time in the future where we will look back at the cryptoverse of today and wonder how did those neanderthal degenerates secure wife-changing wealth using such ancient tech in much the same way we think of caveman bashing each other over the head with clubs thousands of years gone by.

One can only hope to be around to see it all play out.