LayerZero’s market shifting, there’s a better environment ahead for everyone, CEO says

The future of the crypto industry is bright. Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero, a cross-chain interoperability protocol, told Cointelegraph at the Toronto Collision conference that, in fact, the current situation is not that dire. “2015 was basically unbearable. (…) Nobody cared; nothing. For me, it really wasn’t that bad,” Pellegrino said.

Pellegrino told Cointelegraph US news editor Sam Bourgi that usage of the LayerZero protocol has exploded, from 10,000 messages per day six months ago to 650,000 messages per day now. Its market is developing rapidly. Pellegrino said:

“Historically, it’s been mostly DeFi (decentralized finance). 70% of our total transaction volume is probably a real DeFi use case, (…) but maybe 80% of our inbound transaction volume is spread across games and NFTs between.”

“I think the next 36 months are going to be very different than the last 12 months,” he added, referring to LayerZero and the industry as a whole. “A ton of amazing stuff is being built. A lot of very important outside parties are already involved.”

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According to Pellegrino, LayerZero’s market share has increased as its usage has grown. He called LayerZero “a very important pipeline that will be used for almost everything that relies on blockchain technology.” In the multi-chain environment that Pellegrino sees, the need for it will not diminish. He said:

“Even the most zealous maxis in their own ecosystem – Anatoly (Yakovenko) Vitalik (Buterin) from Solana from Ethereum – I don’t think they both believe that everything will exist in one chain. “

LayerZero raised $120 million in Series B funding in April, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, BOND, Circle Ventures, Christie’s, OpenSea Ventures, and Samsung Next, bringing LayerZero’s valuation to $3 billion. Among other things, it plans to expand into the Asia-Pacific region.

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