Crypto by Day

This is a screening of the crypto project LayerZero. See Screenings for more information.

LayerZero ($ZRO)

Decentralized infra for cross-chain communication.

Verdict: GOOD

Details

As of 2025-12-21:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/layerzero/

Product

Decentralized, censorship resistant, permissionless infra for cross-chain communication.

Special LayerZero smart contracts run on all integrated chains, controlled by the LayerZero network of oracles, validators, and executors. Two-way communication: a smart contract on the source chain can both read and write data from/to the target chain.

This can be used to write omnichain apps that can read and write data, and execute smart contracts across multiple blockchains, as if they were a single chain.

This can be used for example to bridge tokens, and to receive price information from other chains.

The core smart contracts deployed across chains are immutable and non-upgradeable, to ensure the protocol will always work.

Integrated across the board with all the chains that matter (and most that don’t, too).

Aquired Stargate, a cross-chain bridge built on LayerZero, in August 2025.

Used by Ethena, EtherFi, Pancakeswap, Beam, Kraken, etc.

Token

Token $ZRO. Launched mid 2024. Used to pay transaction fees, and for staking. Fees do not have to be paid in ZRO, however.

55% of supply for investors/partners and team. Started vesting in mid 2025, ends mid 2027.

Do monthly buyback and burns since September 2025 using revenue from Stargate. 100% of Stargate revenue will be used to buy ZRO on the open market and burn them. As of December 2025, there have been 3 buybacks, with 1.2M USD total spent.

There is also a fee switch mechanism, which enables additional fees in the protocol. When enabled, these fees are converted to ZRO and burned. This switch is controlled by ZRO holders to turn on or off in governance votes. So far it has not been turned on, as the quorum has not been reached in any vote.

Team

Co-founders Bryan Pellegrino and Ryan Zarick. Both comp-sci.

I read a profile on Pellegrino, and watched a presentation by him. Seems like a very smart and also very driven guy.

Has raised over $400M from high-profile investors, including Sequoia, a16z, Coinbase, Binance, Multicoin, and OKX.

Community

Blog is active. Lots of followers and some engagement on X. Otherwise no active community to speak of.

X

https://x.com/LayerZero_Core, https://x.com/LayerZero_Labs, https://x.com/LayerZero_Fndn

Telegram

Discord

YouTube