Original | Odaily Star Daily
Author | Azuma
The proposal for 'LayerZero acquires Stargate,' which has entered the formal voting process, has suddenly changed.
On August 21, Wormhole Foundation, a direct competitor of LayerZero, publicly announced on X that LayerZero's proposed acquisition bid of approximately $110 million undervalued Stargate's protocol assets and growth. Therefore, Wormhole plans to submit a higher bid and requests a suspension of the current Snapshot vote for 5 working days to refine the bidding process and protect the interests of STG holders.
Background summary: LayerZero initiates acquisition.
Regarding LayerZero's acquisition proposal for Stargate, it can be traced back to August 11—reference reading (LayerZero proposed to acquire Stargate: both tokens surged over 20%+, but this group strongly opposed).
In the early hours of that day, the LayerZero Foundation released a draft in Stargate's governance forum, proposing to acquire Stargate for a total price of $110 million.
Specifically, the LayerZero Foundation proposed to exchange all circulating STG (including STG in staking/voting status) at a ratio of 1 STG : 0.08634 ZRO at the price of $0.1675 per STG (actually slightly higher than the market price at that time) and $1.94 per ZRO. After the acquisition is completed, Stargate will be more deeply integrated into the LayerZero ecosystem, Stargate DAO will be dissolved, and all excess revenue generated by Stargate in the future will be used to reduce the circulating supply of ZRO through a buyback program.
After the proposal was announced, the official Twitter of LayerZero and Stargate frequently interacted, both parties talked a lot about 'win-win cooperation.' As a result, on that day, both ZRO and STG surged, but upon closer inspection of Stargate's governance forum discussion content, the vast majority of Stargate were opposed to the acquisition proposal, believing that LayerZero's bid was too low.
Early progress: Vote initiated, large holders crush.
On August 18, the proposal officially initiated voting on Snapshot, and STG holders will jointly decide whether to accept the acquisition offer. Compared to the initial proposal, LayerZero did not raise the acquisition bid but claimed it would share 50% of Stargate's total revenue over the next six months with veSTG holders (i.e., users who vote directly).
After the voting started, it quickly surpassed the minimum voting requirement, and the support rate even surged to over 97% (according to the rules, more than 70% at the end means it passes). LayerZero co-founder Bryan Pellegrino even proudly stated on the CounterParty podcast: 'This is the voting with the highest participation in Stargate's history.'
Such a one-sided voting result is not surprising. Although many members of the Stargate community oppose the offer, LayerZero and Stargate, as fully integrated backend protocols and frontend products, are inherently difficult to view as two independent entities. In fact, half of the board members of the Stargate Foundation are appointed by LayerZero... Considering the interactions between LayerZero and Stargate, it is not hard to imagine that both parties control enough voting power. To put it bluntly, this is a vote that is 'destined to pass but needs a formality.'
Wormhole's conspiracy: even if they can't take action, they must still make you uncomfortable.
Perhaps even LayerZero and Stargate did not expect Wormhole to intervene at such a critical moment.
As of the time of writing, unlike the 'harmonious scene' of frequent interactions between the two parties following LayerZero's acquisition proposal, after Wormhole expressed its intention to acquire, Stargate's official Twitter did not release any related updates, and LayerZero's side only had co-founder Bryan seemingly responding with, 'This cannot happen.'
As of the time of writing, Wormhole has not yet made a formal offer, and the reason is quite amusing—Wormhole claims it needs more time for due diligence on Stargate's valuation because they are not as familiar with Stargate as LayerZero, which has occupied half of the latter's foundation board seats...
Based on the current situation, the subsequent developments of this incident can only be one of the following four scenarios, and regardless of the scenario, Wormhole will be pleased to see it unfold.
The first scenario is that Stargate suspends the vote, then enters the bidding war between Wormhole and LayerZero, assuming Wormhole wins in the end. In this case, Wormhole would directly take away its biggest competitor's core product, thus capturing more market share.
The second scenario assumes that LayerZero wins the bid, or that LayerZero unilaterally raises the bid and advances the proposal. In this case, LayerZero will pay more funds to STG holders, while Wormhole can watch its opponent consume more without spending a dime.
The third scenario is that Stargate ignores Wormhole's bid on the grounds that the process has started, and the proposal will continue to advance in its original state (the current support rate is still high). In this case, assuming LayerZero completes the acquisition, the STG that missed out on a higher bid will inevitably be frustrated, and Wormhole will be happy to see a division in LayerZero's community.
The fourth scenario is that Stargate forcibly advances the vote, assuming the proposal ultimately fails due to opposition from the Stargate community (the current support rate is still over 88%, so the possibility of failure is extremely low), and Wormhole's obstruction of the plan succeeds.
In summary, I personally lean towards the second and third scenarios. After all, Stargate is a core product of LayerZero, which is absolutely unwilling to bear the consequences of losing that product.
Fluid CEO DMH succinctly summarized the current situation: 'Clearly, Stargate and LayerZero had already reached an agreement before the proposal; Wormhole is very angry that LayerZero bought Singapore for a bag of rice; therefore, Wormhole chooses to raise the price in an attempt to disrupt LayerZero's acquisition plan; but Stargate will ultimately be absorbed by LayerZero, which the market is well aware of, so there will be no dramatic situations.'
Wormhole may have already known that the final result was predetermined before making the offer, but just by moving their lips, they could make their biggest competitor extremely uncomfortable without any loss to themselves. This is simply a top-level conspiracy.
（The above content is excerpted and reproduced with authorization from partner PANews, original link | Source: Odaily Star Daily）
"LayerZero acquires its own cross-chain bridge Stargate; is Wormhole's intervention useful?" This article was first published on (Block客).
