Stargate

Stargate Finance is a cross-chain liquidity bridge that moves native assets—USDC, USDT, ETH, BTC, and Omnichain Fungible Tokens (OFTs)—across 80+ blockchains without wrapping, built on top of LayerZero's V2 messaging protocol.

What It Is

Stargate is a composable, omnichain liquidity transport protocol. Where traditional bridges lock assets on one chain and mint synthetic copies on another, Stargate routes native assets directly through shared liquidity pools, so users receive the actual underlying token rather than a wrapped proxy. It operates both as a liquidity protocol—managing coordinated pools across chains via smart contracts—and as the primary bridge frontend in the LayerZero ecosystem.

The project was founded in 2021 and launched publicly in March 2022, rapidly amassing $2.5 billion in total value locked across seven integrated chains in its opening weeks. That growth reflected genuine demand: Stargate solved a real problem with prior bridge designs, which either required wrapped tokens or suffered from fragmented, per-route liquidity that caused reverts and failed transactions.

Core Mechanism

Stargate's founding innovation was the Delta algorithm—a rebalancing engine that maintains unified liquidity across all chains simultaneously rather than allocating separate pools per route. When users bridge assets, the algorithm adjusts pool credits across source and destination chains in real time, preventing the imbalances that caused earlier bridges to fail or revert.

With Stargate V2, that approach matured into a credit allocation system managed by an AI Planning Module (AIPM). The AIPM monitors transfer volumes across all routes and automatically reallocates credits toward high-demand paths, replacing manual rebalancing. Two types of contracts underpin this system: StargatePool contracts hold native assets on established core chains, while StargateOFT contracts mint backed representations on emerging chains (called Hydra chains). Transfers settle instantly and with finality on the source chain—no risk of rollback or double-spend once a transaction is submitted.

Four transfer patterns cover the full network topology:

• Pool-to-Pool transfers between major chains
• Pool-to-OFT extensions to Hydra and emerging chains
• OFT-to-OFT point-to-point transfers
• OFT-to-Pool redemptions back to native assets

Any OFT-compliant token can plug into Stargate's routing without Stargate needing to deploy dedicated pools for every asset pair.

Supported Assets and Features

Stargate bridges USDC, USDT, ETH, BTC, and any LayerZero OFT across 80+ networks, spanning major EVM chains (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Polygon) and increasingly non-EVM ecosystems. The main interface offers Transfer, Earn, Stake, and Pool sections, along with a Value Transfer API for developer integration.

Liquidity providers deposit assets into pools and earn fees from transfer volume. Equilibrium fees—higher when a pool is depleted, lower when it is flush—naturally incentivize rebalancing deposits without protocol intervention.

Solana Integration

Stargate's core smart contracts are EVM-native, but the protocol extends to Solana through two complementary mechanisms. First, Circle's Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP v2), integrated by Stargate in July 2025, enables fast native USDC transfers between Solana and any CCTP-connected chain—no wrapping, no synthetic token risk. Second, LayerZero's Omnichain Fungible Token standard covers Solana directly, allowing OFT-compliant tokens to move between Solana and other chains via Stargate's routing infrastructure.

Solana is one of the named native-USDT issuance chains, meaning USDT bridged to Solana through Stargate arrives as Tether's actual Solana-native token rather than a wrapped version. The active bridge interface at stargate.finance confirms Solana as both a live source and destination chain, and the protocol has been used to bridge OFTs such as PENGU between Solana and Abstract.

Governance and Token History

Stargate launched with STG as its governance and incentive token. In August 2025, LayerZero Foundation proposed a $110 million acquisition of Stargate DAO, consolidating the two projects under a single token and governance structure. The Stargate DAO approved the merger, and on September 12, 2025, STG was converted to ZRO at a fixed rate of 1 STG = 0.08634 ZRO with no conversion deadline set.

The Stargate protocol continues to operate under its own brand and domain, now governed within the LayerZero ecosystem. veSTG holders who had tokens locked before the proposal date received 50% of protocol revenue for six months following the merger (September 2025 through February 2026), with the remaining 50% directed to ZRO buybacks. The transition unified Stargate's bridge liquidity rails with LayerZero's messaging network under a single governance and revenue framework.

Security

Stargate V2 has been audited by Zellic and OtterSec, with reports published in the official GitHub repository. The protocol operates one of the largest bug bounty programs in DeFi through Immunefi. According to the team and the documentation, the protocol has had no serious security exploits since its 2022 launch.

Two incidents provide useful context. In early 2023, Alameda Research—which purchased 10% of the STG token supply in a 2022 community sale—had its wallets compromised by a third party, creating risk of illegitimate token sales. Stargate DAO resolved this by reissuing all STG tokens to neutralize the threat; this was a governance response to an external wallet compromise, not a protocol exploit. A separate December 2023 incident involved a phishing link posted via Stargate's Snapshot governance interface, through which $43,000 was stolen from users who clicked the link. Again, the protocol itself was not compromised.

Recent Developments

In March 2026, Stargate's liquidity rails were used to launch satUSD, an over-collateralized multi-chain stablecoin. In April 2026, Stargate extended its bridge to Injective, enabling single-click liquidity movement from 80+ connected chains. These expansions reflect Stargate's continued role as active DeFi infrastructure within the LayerZero ecosystem even after the STG-ZRO governance consolidation.