Lido DAO approves use of community-backed open framework, NTT, to bring wstETH to BNB Chain, using both Wormhole and Axelar for verification.
The long-awaited integration of Lido wrapped staked assets ETH (wstETH) with the Native Token Transfers (NTT) framework for transfers to BNB Chain is now live, thanks to months of collaborative efforts and the combined interoperability infrastructure of Axelar and Wormhole (DAO forum proposal here). This marks a significant milestone in interoperability for the largest protocol on Ethereum by TVL (~$26B as of 12-Aug-2024), allowing users to seamlessly transfer their staked ETH between Ethereum and the BNB Chain’s ecosystem.
Wormhole’s Approach to Token Transfers
Wormhole has developed a multi-bridge solution to enhance the security, decentralization, and operational efficiency of token transfers. This approach ensures the Lido DAO retains governance control over wstETH, maintaining the highest standards of safety and transparency. The integration is also designed to allow for cross-chain governance, ensuring that Lido DAO can perform governance actions securely across different chains.
How It Works
- Lock and Mint: When users transfer wstETH from Ethereum to BNB, the NttManager contract locks the wstETH and sends a message to mint equivalent tokens on BNB through the Transceiver contracts managed by Wormhole and (soon) Axelar.
- Verification and Relay: Wormhole’s Guardians and Axelar’s validators verify the messages and relay attestations to their respective Transceivers on BNB. The system is integrated with Wormhole Relaying and Axelar Gas Services for automatic and reliable message delivery, and users are able to pay up front for delivery on the destination chain. The NttManager aggregates these messages to ensure all conditions are met before minting wstETH on BNB.
- Burn and Unlock: For transfers from BNB back to Ethereum, the process involves burning wstETH on BNB and unlocking it on Ethereum, ensuring a smooth and secure transition.
NTT — A Neutral, Flexible, Open Token Transfer Framework
Native Token Transfers (NTT) introduces an open, flexible, and composable framework for transferring native tokens across blockchains while preserving their intrinsic properties. Integrating a token with NTT empowers teams to develop cross-chain protocols with an open framework that supports protocol evolution over a long time horizon. Projects built on NTT retain control over their tokens' behavior on each chain, including customizability, metadata, and ownership/upgradeability, enabling them to integrate with any kind of token standard or governance system.
For existing token deployments, the framework can be used in “locking” mode which preserves the original token supply on a single chain while enabling seamless cross-chain transfers. Otherwise, the framework can be deployed in “burning” mode to deploy natively multichain tokens with supply distributed among multiple chains.
NTT is powering natively multichain tokens for industry-leading projects like Lido, JitoSOL, ether.fi, Puffer Finance, Stakewise, and Wormhole’s W token.
Take Your Token Multichain with NTT
Check out the NTT Docs, Github, or get in touch to go multichain and grow your token’s reach with an open and flexible standard trusted by some of the industry’s highest-value and most systemically-important crypto assets.
Learn More
Learn more about NTT in a 15-minute workshop given by Wormhole Foundation Product Lead, Nikhil Suri: Watch here.
About Wormhole
Wormhole is the leading interoperability platform that powers multichain applications and bridges at scale. Wormhole provides developers access to liquidity and users on over 30 of the leading blockchain networks, enabling use cases that span DeFi, NFTs, governance, and more.
The wider Wormhole network is trusted and used by teams like Circle and Uniswap. To date, the platform has facilitated the transfer of over 40 billion dollars through over 1 billion cross-chain messages. To learn more about Wormhole, follow on Twitter, join the Discord, or read the blog.