tl;dr
Wormhole Foundation (WF) has entered a bidding contest against LayerZero’s $110 million proposal to acquire Stargate Finance, arguing that LayerZero undervalues the protocol based on its treasury assets and growth. LayerZero offered to buy all circulating STG tokens at $0.1675 each, requiring 70% ap...
Wormhole Foundation (WF) has entered the bidding competition for Stargate Finance, challenging LayerZero’s $110 million acquisition proposal. In a statement on August 20, WF argued that LayerZero’s offer significantly undervalues the cross-chain bridge protocol, emphasizing Stargate’s treasury assets and recent growth metrics.
LayerZero Foundation announced its acquisition proposal on August 10, offering to purchase all circulating STG tokens at $0.1675 per token via a swap for ZRO tokens. The offer requires approval from STG holders through Stargate’s governance process, needing a 70% approval threshold to pass.
WF highlighted that Stargate maintains over $92 million in treasury assets, including $76 million in stablecoins and $16 million in Ethereum, and noted significant growth momentum. Stargate processed $4 billion in bridge volume during July 2025, marking a tenfold year-over-year increase, and held $348 million in total value locked (TVL) across 80 chains as of August 20.
Wormhole Foundation criticized LayerZero’s bid for undervaluing Stargate’s assets, brand, codebase, and team, advocating for a meaningfully higher offer. Conversely, LayerZero defended its pricing by pointing to a backing value of $0.14444 per circulating token, below the trading price of $0.1637 per token at proposal time, claiming their offer includes a premium on both figures.
Beyond financial offers, LayerZero framed the acquisition as ecosystem consolidation, intending to allocate future Stargate excess revenue to ZRO token buybacks and expand the protocol’s scope. The foundation also emphasized that unified governance would reduce resource conflicts between competitive protocols.
On the other hand, Wormhole Foundation proposed combining Stargate’s unified liquidity pools with their broad integration ecosystem, forecasting higher volumes, revenues, and user engagement to benefit both STG and W token holders. WF requested a five-business-day suspension of the ongoing vote on LayerZero’s proposal to allow due diligence and competing bid preparation.
The governance vote mandates a quorum of 1.2 million veSTG tokens with a 70% approval rate. In response to criticism regarding equal treatment of locked versus unlocked tokens, the proposal was amended to grant additional compensation for veSTG stakers through six months of revenue distribution.