LayerZero wins Stargate acquisition in 4-way bidding war

Blockchain messaging protocol LayerZero has won the bid to acquire crypto protocol Stargate after a shaky first offer and a late four-way bidding war.

Stargate’s community voted on Sunday with a 95% majority to greenlight the LayerZero Foundation’s $110 million acquisition proposal, which it amended after holders of the Stargate (STG) token said the original deal was unfair.

Three of LayerZero’s rivals also put in last-minute bids or intent-to-bids to acquire Stargate, with one bidder, Wormhole, unsuccessfully asking for the vote on LayerZero’s acquisition to be paused.

LayerZero developed and launched Stargate in 2022, and the deal now sees the platform come back under its control. Stargate facilitates transfers across blockchains using liquidity pools that it says allow assets to be transferred natively instead of relying on blockchain bridges, which have a history of being hacked.

LayerZero claims record participation

LayerZero co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino wrote on X on Sunday that the Stargate community vote had “the highest participation of any vote” in the platform’s history.

The voting website shows over 15,000 addresses took part, with 94.76% representing 7.2 million STG tokens voting in favor, while 5.24%, or 399,400 tokens, voted against

“Not only did ~95% of the stake weight vote in the affirmative, but ~95% of addresses voted in the affirmative,” Pellegrino added.

Source: Bryan Pellegrino## Wormhole made offer for Stargate

Wormhole made an offer on Saturday after saying on Wednesday that it would “submit a meaningfully higher bid,” and that LayerZero “doesn’t create a compelling offer, which values Stargate’s ongoing business at an unreasonably low number.”

Wormhole pitched a $120 million all-cash purchase that would see stakers of Stargate’s token “receive 3x the projected revenue for the next 6 months, accelerated and paid immediately, as part of our successful acquisition.”

Axelar, Across also considered a bid for Stargate

The cross-blockchain platforms Axelar Network and Across Protocol also signalled their interest in bidding for Stargate on Sunday, with both noting that the vote on LayerZero’s bid would need to be paused.

Across co-founder Hart Lambur posted to Stargate’s forum that it’d been suggested to him that his platform submit an offer for Stargate, but he had “no interest in rushing an 11th-hour proposal, however if this process is slowed down and other bids are properly considered, Across will participate.

The Axelar Foundation posted to the forum a few hours later that it had a “strong interest” in bidding if a “competitive process” was created for the acquisition, it would pitch “a comprehensive proposal and encourage Stargate to collect all options before making a decision.”

However, Stargate Foundation lead Angus Lamps said in response to the bids that the vote on LayerZero’s bid can’t be paused, and Stargate “has been engaging with any parties” that sign a non-disclosure agreement and want to conduct due diligence.

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LayerZero’s initial proposal pitched using Stargate’s excess revenue for a ZRO buyback program, which some Stargate community members called “not attractive at all” as it didn’t offer advantages to STG holders.

It revised the offer on Sunday to give Stargate stakers half of all top-line revenue for six months, with the remaining half used to buy back its LayerZero (ZRO) token.

Under the approved deal, all circulating STG will be swapped for ZRO at a ratio of 1 STG to 0.08634 ZRO.

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