Stargate Finance

Stargate is a bridge built around shared liquidity pools. Instead of minting a wrapped copy of a token for every transfer, it holds pools of real USDC, USDT, ETH and a few other assets on each major chain. A user deposits into the pool on one chain and is paid out of the pool on another. It was the first application built on LayerZero, a cross-chain messaging protocol, and launched on 17 March 2022. The Stargate website's structured data gives 2021 as its founding year and names three LayerZero Labs co-founders, Bryan Pellegrino, Ryan Zarick and Caleb Banister, as its founders.

Until 2025 Stargate was nominally governed by holders of its STG token through the Stargate DAO. That ended with a Snapshot vote that closed on 24 August 2025, in which the LayerZero Foundation offered to acquire the protocol. About 7.2 million veSTG voted for the offer and about 0.4 million against. Under the terms, all circulating STG became redeemable for ZRO at 0.08634 ZRO per STG, the Stargate DAO was dissolved, and the LayerZero Foundation took over "ownership and operation of all Stargate Finance duties". veSTG holders were promised 50% of Stargate's top-line revenue for six months; after that, excess revenue goes to buying back ZRO.

The website's terms of use, last updated 17 September 2025, name the Stargate Foundation and its affiliates, including the ZRO Association (doing business as the ZRO Foundation), as the operators. Stargate's documentation now lives on LayerZero's documentation site. Stargate is therefore best read as a LayerZero product with its own brand. Neither foundation publishes an address on the pages we checked.

Stargate V2 uses two kinds of contracts. StargatePool contracts hold native assets on chains with deep liquidity, such as Ethereum, Arbitrum and Base. StargateOFT contracts, part of what Stargate calls Hydra, mint backed tokens such as USDC.e on newer chains that lack native liquidity. Our count of the V2 entries in Stargate's API on 25 October 2026 found 60 chains and 134 contracts. USDC.e, WETH and USDT were the most common assets.

The bridge keeps track of how much each route can pay out with credits. A pool's balance must always cover its unallocated credits plus the credits it has handed to remote routes. That is what lets Stargate offer what it calls Instant Guaranteed Finality: once your transaction succeeds on the source chain, the destination payout is guaranteed not to revert, even though delivery still waits for a LayerZero message. In V2, credits are moved between routes by an automated AI Planning Module that watches demand. V1, which used fixed credits per route, still runs, but users are told to move liquidity to V2.

• Taxi (Fast): your transfer goes in its own LayerZero message and leaves at once.
• Bus (Economy): several transfers on the same route share one message and split its cost. The bus leaves when it is full or when a maximum wait set by the Stargate Foundation runs out, and any passenger can pay the remaining seats to make it leave early.

A Stargate transfer has two parts. The first is the protocol fee, taken in the bridged asset. In V1 this was a flat 6 basis points (0.06%). In V2 it is dynamic: the AI Planning Module charges a fee on routes whose destination pool is running low, and pays a rebate on routes that help refill it, so the amount received can be slightly more or slightly less than the amount sent. The V2 documentation split fees five-sixths to the treasury and one-sixth to veSTG holders. That split predates the August 2025 acquisition, which redirected revenue first to veSTG holders for six months and then to ZRO buybacks.

The second part is gas, paid in the source chain's native token: LayerZero's execution fee for delivering the message and the fee for the verifier networks that check it. Bus mode divides this between passengers. Stargate's FAQ gives the example of a six-seat bus, where one ticket costs roughly a sixth of the full message fee. Adding gas on the destination chain costs extra. The exact total is shown in the transfer screen before you sign.

Stargate does not run its own validator set. Every transfer is a LayerZero V2 message, and LayerZero lets each application choose which Decentralized Verifier Networks (DVNs) must confirm a message. Stargate's documentation says it uses its own DVN alongside one run by Nethermind. That makes it a committee model: if the required verifiers attest to a false message, the destination pool can be drained. For how this compares with other designs, see how LayerZero and Stargate compare with other crypto bridges.

Contract administration moved in August 2025. A DAO vote that closed on 12 August approved moving all protocol contracts from Gnosis Safe multisigs to OneSig, a LayerZero tool that lets one set of signatures authorize transactions on many chains. The threshold stays at 3 of 6, with the same signers as before. The proposal says OneSig has had seven independent audits, and that treasury funds stay in the Gnosis Safes for now. The proposal does not name the six signers. Since the acquisition, these keys answer to the LayerZero Foundation rather than to a DAO.

Stargate's Immunefi bug bounty, live since September 2024, pays up to $10 million for critical smart contract bugs, one of the larger ceilings among bridges. We did not find an audit list for the Stargate contracts on the current Stargate or LayerZero documentation pages we opened. Older audit reports may still be in Stargate's GitHub repositories.

We found no exploit of Stargate's pool contracts in the DefiLlama hacks database as of October 2026. The database does list a December 2023 phishing incident involving Stargate Finance on Ethereum, about $43,000, without a source. The other risks are structural:

• Dependency on LayerZero: Stargate's security is whatever its DVN configuration provides, and the LayerZero Foundation now controls both the protocol and its upgrade keys.
• Hydra tokens: USDC.e and similar tokens on newer chains are backed by pool liquidity elsewhere, not issued by Circle or Tether. Their value depends on the pools and credit system working.
• Concentrated control: a 3-of-6 signer set can manage the protocol contracts.
• Fake tokens and sites: the terms of use warn that anyone can create a fake version of a token. Use only stargate.finance.

To bridge, connect a wallet at stargate.finance, choose the token, the source and destination chains and the amount, then pick Fast or Economy and confirm. Approve the token first, checking that the spending allowance is what you expect (how token approvals work). LayerZero Scan, at layerzeroscan.com, tracks the message after it leaves.

Liquidity providers can withdraw from V2 pools on the same chain almost immediately, according to the FAQ. Redeeming to a different chain takes longer, because the source chain has to reach its confirmation count. Polygon, for example, needs 512 block confirmations, about 20 minutes. Former STG holders who have not converted can still redeem STG for ZRO at 0.08634; veSTG was unlocked and can be withdrawn from the staking contract. Support runs through Stargate's Discord and Telegram, linked from its website. No genuine moderator needs your seed phrase, and private messages pointing to a claim site are a common scam.

Stargate's arc runs from a DAO-governed bridge to a LayerZero-owned product:

• 17 March 2022: launch as the first application on LayerZero, followed by a community token auction on 30 March 2022.
• Date not stated in the docs we opened: Stargate V2, built on LayerZero V2, adds dynamic fees, Hydra OFTs and bus transfers; V1 keeps running.
• 24 September 2024: the current Immunefi bug bounty program goes live.
• 12 August 2025: DAO approves moving protocol contracts to OneSig at 3 of 6.
• 24 August 2025: STG holders approve the LayerZero Foundation's acquisition; the Stargate DAO is dissolved and STG becomes redeemable for ZRO.
• 17 September 2025: new website terms name the Stargate Foundation and ZRO Association as operators.