Wormhole Challenges LayerZero's Stargate Bid Amid Community Debate

Wormhole Foundation has entered the fray in the race to acquire Stargate, a cross-chain interoperability platform, by countering LayerZero’s initial $110 million bid. The LayerZero Foundation had first proposed the acquisition in early August, but its offer faced backlash from the Stargate community for undervaluing the platform’s business potential. In response, Wormhole posted on Stargate’s forum, stating that LayerZero’s bid “doesn’t create a compelling offer” and asserting that Stargate’s ongoing business is worth “an unreasonably low number” [1]. Wormhole has since requested a five-day pause in the community voting process to allow time to finalize a more competitive offer [2].

The Stargate community is now engaged in an active debate over which bid aligns best with its long-term interests. LayerZero revised its proposal to include a revenue-sharing model for staked STG tokenholders, offering them 50% of Stargate’s top-line revenue for six months, with the remainder allocated to buying back LayerZero’s ZRO token [3]. This revised offer has received strong support, with 88.6% of STG holders in favor, covering 6.6 million tokens [1].

Wormhole, however, argues that a higher offer is justified given Stargate’s metrics, including $345 million in total value locked (TVL), $97.6 million in stablecoin holdings, and $4 billion in bridge volume in July 2025 [1]. The foundation claims that Stargate’s integration across over 80 blockchain networks and its potential to unify liquidity make it a strategic asset. Wormhole’s potential acquisition would create a “market-dominant ecosystem,” combining Stargate’s liquidity pools with Wormhole’s broad cross-chain integrations and growing interest in real-world assets (RWAs) [1].

Both bids are currently under evaluation, with the outcome expected to shape the future direction of cross-chain collaboration in the DeFi space. The competition underscores the broader challenge of valuing DeFi protocols, where traditional financial metrics often fail to capture the full scope of a project’s potential [2]. As the community weighs its options, the final decision could influence the valuation standards and strategic integration models for other DeFi platforms in the future [1].

In the short term, the heightened interest has driven gains across all three platforms’ native tokens. Wormhole’s (W) token rose 6.3% in the past 24 hours, while Stargate’s token climbed 6% and LayerZero’s token saw a 3.6% increase [2]. The broader crypto market also showed a modest upward trend, with Bitcoin and Ethereum gaining 1% and 5.2%, respectively [3].

Source: [1] Wormhole vs LayerZero – Who Will Win the Fight for Stargate’s $345M Network? (https://coindoo.com/wormhole-vs-layerzero-who-will-win-the-fight-for-stargates-345m-network/)

[2] Wormhole Foundation Moves to Outbid LayerZero for Stargate (https://blockonomi.com/wormhole-foundation-moves-to-outbid-layerzero-for-stargate/)

[3] Cryptocurrency news, analysis, price predictions (https://coindoo.com/)