The LayerZero Foundation has tabled a $110M proposal to acquire the Stargate cross-chain bridge, a protocol it originally launched in 2022, in a move that could decide the fate of the battered STG price.

If approved by Stargate DAO with its 70% supermajority threshold, the deal would dissolve Stargate’s independent governance, retire the STG token entirely, and swap holders into LayerZero’s native ZRO at a fixed 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO ratio.

Based on the offer price of $1.94 per ZRO, the swap values STG crypto at just $0.1675, barely above its current $0.183 trading level after a +12% rally on the news, and a fraction of its $4.14 peak in 2022.

(STGUSDT)

Why Do LayerZero Want to Acquire Stargate Bridge?

The strategy is clear: LayerZero wants Stargate’s user base, brand, and $70 billion in historical transfer volume under one stack, accelerating its roadmap beyond simple bridging into a broader interoperability layer.

CEO Bryan Pellegrino has pitched the acquisition as a way to “move faster” and give Stargate the resources to expand aggressively while integrating more tightly into the LayerZero ecosystem.

Historical precedent suggests such mergers can radically alter market structure. Binance’s early acquisition of Trust Wallet and FTX’s takeover of Blockfolio converted standalone services into powerful funnels for the parent token’s liquidity and user growth.

Consolidation can be even more decisive in cross-chain infrastructure. The 2021 merger of AnySwap into Multichain redefined cross-chain routing, although it also concentrated risk when Multichain later faced operational collapse.

DISCOVER: The 12+ Hottest Crypto Presales to Buy Right Now

For LayerZero, bringing Stargate in-house could secure strategic dominance over the cross-chain bridge market when competition from Wormhole, Synapse, and Axelar is intensifying.

Yet for STG holders, the economics are more contentious. The acquisition would redirect roughly $939,000 in quarterly bridge revenue away from STG staking rewards and toward ZRO buybacks, rewarding ZRO holders at the expense of STG’s existing yield base.

Critics argue the bid undervalues Stargate’s cash flows and growth potential, effectively handing LayerZero a high-revenue asset at bear-market prices.

With both ZRO and STG prices rising since the proposal, the paper value of the deal has already climbed to $127 million.

Whether that will be enough to sway STG holders depends on whether they see ZRO’s upside and LayerZero’s integration plan as worth cashing out of an independent bridge token at the bottom of its cycle.

How to Get In Early on The Next DeFi Play: Bid Bitcoin Hyper Layer 2

For investors weighing the LayerZero–Stargate proposal as an on-ramp into cross-chain growth, there’s a compelling case for looking further up the curve, towards Bitcoin Hyper, a Bitcoin Layer-2 project already attracting deep-pocketed conviction buyers.

While the STG-to-ZRO swap consolidates liquidity within an existing ecosystem, Bitcoin Hyper is expanding Bitcoin’s utility into entirely new economic territory, with Solana-level performance and the base-layer security of BTC itself – and an accurate low-cap entry.

This is not a theoretical roadmap. Bitcoin Hyper has unlocked accurate SVM execution on its Bitcoin-anchored rollup, enabling developers to deploy Solana programs natively without trusted parties or federated multisigs.

That makes it the first ecosystem where BTC can move across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, and RWA applications at Solana speeds; effectively bridging the gap between the industry’s most secure asset and its fastest execution environment.

In Bitcoin Hyper’s dual-token model, BTC is the transactional currency within dApps, while HYPER powers the network’s gas fees, brilliant contract execution, and ecosystem operations.

This means demand for HYPER scales directly with on-chain activity,  an economic dynamic that has historically driven exponential growth in Layer-2 tokens when adoption inflects.

With over $8 million raised so far and the presale stage still open, the current price point offers asymmetric upside for investors who believe Bitcoin will capture a meaningful share of the next DeFi cycle.

The bridge between Bitcoin’s trillion-dollar market cap and Solana’s high-throughput DeFi environment is being built now and HYPER is the toll token for every transaction that crosses it.

Early entry is not just about securing a lower cost basis; it’s about positioning ahead of the liquidity wave once exchange listings and DeFi integrations start compounding demand.

For serious capital looking beyond STG’s post-acquisition repricing, Bitcoin Hyper offers exposure to a growth curve with no historical precedent in the BTC ecosystem.

VISIT HYPER HERE

DISCOVER: 9+ Best High-Risk, High-Reward Crypto to Buy in 2025

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Alex Ioannou
Alex Ioannou
On-Chain Journalist

Alex is a seasoned cryptocurrency trader and market analyst with over seven years of active experience in the digital asset space. Since entering the markets in 2017, Alex has specialized in identifying emerging "meta" trends and high-volatility narratives. Notably, Alex... Read More

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