LayerZero’s market shifting, there’s a better environment ahead for everyone, CEO says

The outlook for the crypto industry is bright. As a matter of fact, the present isn’t even all that grim, Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero, told Cointelegraph at the Collision conference in Toronto. “2015 was basically unbearable. […] Nobody cared; there was nothing. This really doesn't seem that bad to me,” Pellegrino said.

LayerZero has seen surging use of its protocol, from 10,000 messages a day six months ago to 650,000 a day now, Pellegrino told Cointelegraph U.S. news editor Sam Bourgi. Its market is rapidly evolving. Pellegrino said:

“Historically, it’s been largely DeFi [decentralized finance]. Probably 70% of our overall volume is real DeFi use cases, […] but probably 80% of our inbound is split between gaming and NFTs.”

“I think the 36 months moving forward are going to look a lot different than the last 12,” he added, referring to LayerZero and the industry as a whole. “A ton of amazing things are being built. A huge number of really important external parties have been getting involved.”

Related: LSD for DeFi: Tenet, LayerZero partner to drive cross-chain liquid staking adoption

Pellegrino said LayerZero’s market share has risen with its usage. He called LayerZero the “really important plumbing that’s going to be used in practically everything” that depends on blockchain technology. The need for it will not diminish in the multichain environment that Pellegrino sees shaping up. He said:

“Even the most ardent maxis of their own ecosystem — Anatoly [Yakovenko] from Solana, Vitalik [Buterin] from Ethereum — I don't think either of them believe that literally everything is going to live in a single chain.”

LayerZero underwent Series B funding in April, raising $120 million, with Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, Circle Ventures, Christie’s, OpenSea Ventures and Samsung Next among the participants, which brought LayerZero's valuation to $3 billion. It has plans to expand into the Asia-Pacific region, among other things.

.@zkLinkorg has integrated the LayerZero messaging protocol to facilitate omnichain trade settlement.

A great example of how LayerZero’s composability allows Oapps (omnichain applications) to utilize the protocol to supplement their own application security. https://t.co/M6zSbuwl52

— LayerZero Labs (@LayerZero_Labs) June 28, 2023

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