The rise in the cryptocurrency market has led to an increase in value for many crypto protocols. Accordingly, the total value locked (TVL) in the cross-blockchain bridge protocol Wormhole has reached 1 billion dollars for the first time in about two years after the cryptocurrency market downturn in May 2022.
Significant Development in Wormhole
While Wormhole’s TVL value reached $1.02 billion, Ethereum with $675 million, Fantom with $174 million, and Solana with $96 million succeeded in taking the top three spots. The protocol’s TVL value showed an increase of over 300% after dropping to $234 million at the beginning of 2023.
Wormhole had previously reached its highest value with a TVL of $3.8 billion shortly before the collapse of the Terra ecosystem. The most significant development that highlighted the protocol was the successful closing of a funding round worth $225 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion on November 29, 2023.
In February 2022, Wormhole lost assets worth $320 million due to a flaw between the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. Following this hack, venture capital firm Jump Crypto promised to replace more than the $320 million lost in the hack. Jump Crypto and Oasis launched a counterattack against the hacker responsible for the Wormhole attack, resulting in the return of $225 million worth of crypto assets to users.
Wormhole and LayerZero Competition
Currently, Wormhole appears as one of the most popular cross-chain and messaging services with approximately 51,807 transactions and 2,394,665 messages sent by users in the last 24 hours. Most bridging activities currently involve transfers from the Ethereum ecosystem to Sui, Solana, and Arbitrum. Since its launch in September 2021, the protocol has processed a volume of $38 billion.
Recently, the competition between LayerZero and Wormhole has been heating up in the crypto community, with significant developments continuing between the two rival protocols. In particular, LayerZero’s suspension of transactions due to users’ expectations of an airdrop has allowed Wormhole to take the lead in this area.
