The Solana ecosystem has a new protocol under its roof now - LayerZero. The crypto bridging solution is now live in its ‘mainnet beta’ phase on Solana. At the moment, asset bridging has been enabled across eight chains: Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Polygon. Once the audits are done and dusted, the beta phase will conclude and over 70 chains will be connected on Solana. The official announcement noted,
“Solana applications and tokens can now enable omnichain functionality, allowing interaction with all LayerZero-connected chains, including Ethereum, L2 rollups, and other EVM L1s.”
To break it down further, this means a lending market can operate across multiple networks like Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and Solana. Likewise, tokens can be deployed and cross-functionally used on Solana and other chains like Ethereum and Avalanche.
The latest integration enhances liquidity for both users and apps. It also expands app functionality, permitting cross-chain apps to interact within the Solana ecosystem.
Community members were stoked with the launch. Comments like “Incredible work,” “LayerZero was the catalyst Solana degens needed," "LFG, this is massive,” “Game changer” and “All roads lead to Solana” were doing the rounds on the heels of the announcement. Adding to the enthusiasm, LayerZero executive Bryan Pellegrino said,
“Long time coming. Glad to see it finally here and can’t wait for all of the upcoming Solana launches to start rolling out.”
From the protocol point of view, LayerZero has been faring pretty well. A recent report brought to light that smart contract deployment on the protocol rose 93% QoQ in the first quarter, indicating strong growth within the developer ecosystem. Likewise, in the same timeframe, omnichain transfer volume crossed $6.7 billion in assets, while messages sent on LayerZero reached 29.6 million. This marked a 91% and 60% QoQ growth respectively.
