Cross-chain protocol Wormhole, with a valuation of $2.5 billion, has completed a $225 million financing round, making it a unicorn in the blockchain industry.
On March 7th, Wormhole announced the issuance of its token W and committed to a token airdrop of 617 million tokens to past users, accounting for 6% of the total supply. Nearly 400,000 wallets will receive the airdrop.
Wormhole was born out of a hackathon and was initially a direct token bridge between the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. In August 2021, the protocol’s second version was launched, utilizing a Proof of Authority (PoA) guardian network as an oracle and an permissionless relay network for cross-chain message transmission.
As a decentralized cross-chain protocol, Wormhole seamlessly integrates smart contracts and encryption technology to ensure secure and reliable asset and data transfer across chains. Through Wormhole, users can easily transfer assets, while developers gain broader innovation space to expand the blockchain ecosystem and industry applications.
In November of last year, Wormhole raised $225 million, valuing the company at $2.5 billion, becoming a unicorn in the blockchain industry.
Recently, ChainCatcher interviewed Dan Reecer, the Chief Operating Officer of Wormhole Foundation, to uncover the mysteries behind Wormhole.
Dan Reecer, a graduate of the prestigious Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, has accumulated four years of experience in healthcare brand marketing before diving into the crypto field. He has spent over five years in the cryptocurrency industry, serving as the Chief Growth Officer of Acala, Marketing Director of Wanchain, and leading growth projects for Web3 Foundation, making significant contributions to the launch of Polkadot. Reecer joined Wormhole Foundation in 2023, continuing to explore and practice crypto projects.
In addition to the token airdrop, Wormhole is also taking new actions in promoting the adoption of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology. After funding Lurk Lab and Zpoken, Wormhole Foundation announced its collaboration with the Succinct team on February 15th to build an Ethereum ZK light client, aiming to decentralize message verification and enhance cross-chain composability and network security.
Furthermore, Wormhole has partnered with AMD for hardware resources, with AMD providing enterprise-level FPGA hardware accelerators to support the development of the Wormhole ecosystem.
ChainCatcher: Wormhole started as a token bridge between Ethereum and Solana and has evolved into a universal message protocol connecting multiple chains in the ecosystem. How did Wormhole gradually grow from a hackathon project to the current Wormhole protocol?
Dan Reecer: Since the launch of the funded project, Wormhole has made continuous breakthroughs in the cross-chain field. In 2020, to break the isolation between Solana and other mainstream networks, the Wormhole team developed the first version and successfully held the first Wormhole hackathon, involving collaborations from multiple teams to build cross-chain applications on the blockchain.
The core goal of the first version of Wormhole was to achieve interoperability between Ethereum and Solana.
Wormhole has made significant progress and now connects over 30 different blockchains. Wormhole recently achieved a milestone by transmitting 1 billion cross-chain messages through Wormhole.
Currently, over 200 applications have been built on the Wormhole platform, with thousands of developers using Wormhole for cross-chain transactions every day, enhancing the liquidity and user base of their applications.
ChainCatcher: Uniswap has chosen Wormhole as its primary cross-chain message protocol for its cross-chain deployment. What unique advantages does Wormhole’s cross-chain protocol have compared to other protocols?
Dan Reecer: First of all, Wormhole has a wide coverage of cross-chains, supporting six blockchain virtual machine execution environments, including Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, NEAR, Sui, and Algorand, and integrating them. This is one of the reasons why many projects choose Wormhole for cross-chain transactions.
Secondly, Wormhole is 100% open source, with all code publicly available on GitHub. It has undergone multiple audits and will undergo regular reviews to ensure security. Recently, we hired a Chief Security Officer and collaborated with the Asymmetric Research team to focus on the overall security of the platform.
In addition, unlike other cross-chain protocols that are usually controlled by two-party multisignature, Wormhole has a highly decentralized nature.
The core organizational structure of Wormhole is based on the Proof of Authority (PoA) mechanism, composed of a group of trusted entities called Guardians. The Wormhole Guardian network consists of 19 members, including Chorus One, Everstake, Figment, and xLabs. Every message transmitted through Wormhole must be verified by 13 out of these 19 validators before being sent to another blockchain. Currently, all validators are within the governance system.
Furthermore, Wormhole closely follows the needs of developers and provides diversified products. Wormhole has five core products aimed at building a comprehensive interoperability platform, rather than being limited to a single product.
For example, Remote Queries, used by Synthetix, allows data extraction from any chain to another, and this product is still in the testing phase.
Uniswap is using Wormhole for cross-chain governance, and Wormhole provides cross-chain governance information and data transmission services to ensure consistency in governance deployment across various interoperability protocols.
ChainCatcher: Last month, Wormhole announced its ZK roadmap and plans to deploy ZK light clients for multi-chain cross-chain infrastructure in the coming months. How will the cross-chain infrastructure field develop in the future? How do you think these new ZK light clients will change the current state of the blockchain industry and how will they drive Wormhole to achieve its long-term goals?
Dan Reecer: Wormhole team has always adhered to the core spirit of cryptocurrency and is actively working to widely apply zk technology to the Wormhole platform, reducing reliance on centralized factors.
With the official launch of zk technology, developers will have two options for transmitting data or tokens: continue to use the existing validator system or choose completely trustless zk technology to eliminate reliance on validators.
The reason why Wormhole attaches great importance to zk technology is that it will effectively reduce the reliance of the Wormhole system on corporate trust and further promote decentralized programming. Through continuous technological innovation and optimization, Wormhole will provide developers with a more secure, efficient, and decentralized interoperability platform.
Wormhole has funded three teams: Lurk, Zpoken, and Succinct. Additionally, Wormhole has received hardware support from AMD in FPGA and GPU to optimize the speed and cost-effectiveness of zk implementation.
Wormhole plans to launch zk clients this year to achieve seamless interoperability between chains such as Ethereum and NEAR.
ChainCatcher: Will Wormhole introduce a dedicated zk layer to manage these zk proofs transmitted between different chains, or is it planning to choose specific chains to solve this problem?
Dan Reecer: Wormhole does not need to develop a dedicated zk layer for this purpose. Instead, Wormhole is developing zk-like clients that can deploy various technologies on different chains for seamless integration without the need for underlying zk solutions like zkSync or Polygon.
Although zk is usually used for privacy protection, in the context of Wormhole, zk is used to reduce centralization trust and enhance decentralization.
ChainCatcher: In December of last year, Monad, a parallel EVM blockchain, announced a partnership with Wormhole and achieved technical integration. Could you provide more details about the collaboration between Wormhole and Monad and the impact of this collaboration?
Dan Reecer: Wormhole will attract users and liquidity for Monad, injecting vitality into its ecosystem. Users can easily cross-chain SOL from Solana to Monad through Wormhole and freely participate in any activities within the Monad ecosystem, including DeFi.
For Wormhole, this is not only a challenge but also an excellent opportunity to expand market share and trading volume.
ChainCatcher: Will Wormhole expand its coverage to different types of projects, or will these projects only focus on message interoperability? Are there plans to collaborate with larger ecosystems like Optimism or Arbitrum?
Dan Reecer: The current plan is to focus on interoperability, which is also one of the biggest opportunities in the entire industry.
Considering the exponential growth of the number of blockchains and the industry as a whole, bridging between chains becomes crucial. It is undeniable that the world is moving towards a multi-chain environment that requires a secure and minimally trusted cross-chain infrastructure to drive this expansion and promote the prosperity of the industry.
For users, the focus is not only on the platform itself but also on cross-chain needs.
Therefore, Wormhole’s focus has always been on building more products and seamlessly integrating them into one set of tools. Currently, Wormhole is actively collaborating with application and blockchain developers, as well as token issuers for cross-chain transactions, to increase the number of covered applications, further expand the scope of cross-chain or multi-chain tokens, and initiate community governance to jointly promote the development of the cross-chain ecosystem. This will continue to be the path for the next 5 to 10 years.
ChainCatcher: In November of last year, Wormhole raised $225 million with a valuation of $2.5 billion. What are the plans after this financing round? Additionally, the team behind Wormhole announced the establishment of Wormhole Labs. What considerations are behind this?
Dan Reecer: Wormhole always places engineering and products at the core. With the development of the Wormhole ecosystem, multiple collaborative teams have gradually formed. Currently, Wormhole has the Foundation, Wormhole Labs, X Labs, and the security-focused Asymmetric Research team, which together constitute the core strength of Wormhole.
In terms of developer support, Wormhole has provided various grants in hackathons in Denver and Ethereum, and will continue to participate in similar events to strengthen the developer ecosystem. In addition, Wormhole is also focused on recruiting top talents.
ChainCatcher: Wormhole has launched the Cross-chain Ecosystem Fund and XGrant funding program. What specific criteria are considered when selecting projects for funding? Are there plans to increase funding amounts in the future to support more promising projects?
Dan Reecer: X Grants is specifically designed for open-source projects in the Wormhole ecosystem, and the official website provides relevant funding criteria. Self-applications will be evaluated and screened by a dedicated team.
Wormhole also collaborates with BorderlessCapital to launch the Cross-chain Ecosystem Fund, aiming to invest in project teams that can drive the development of the entire cross-chain ecosystem. These teams have been closely integrated with Wormhole from the beginning.
Furthermore, regarding the Wormhole Base Camp accelerator program operated by Outlier Ventures and funded by BorderlessCapital, it focuses on supporting early-stage Web3 founders. Five startups have been selected so far and will receive a $200,000 investment from BorderlessCapital.
Wormhole is always committed to supporting the development of the entire cross-chain ecosystem. Whether to expand the funding scale requires further research and preparation.
ChainCatcher: With Bitcoin recently reaching new highs and the crypto market sentiment remaining high, will Wormhole accelerate the progress and development of certain projects?
Dan Reecer: Wormhole does not change its direction due to market fluctuations. Wormhole has been in development for over three years and has experienced market cycles. Wormhole focuses on its goals, releases new products, and improves existing ones.
Market cycles may cause some turmoil on social media, but Wormhole remains true to its original vision and is committed to fulfilling its mission.