Stargate DAO

Stargate is a bridge that moves native tokens between blockchains in a single transaction, drawing on liquidity pools shared across every chain it serves. It runs on LayerZero, a cross-chain messaging protocol, and from its launch in March 2022 until August 2025 it was governed by the Stargate DAO, whose STG token holders voted with time-locked veSTG. In August 2025 those holders accepted an offer from the LayerZero Foundation to take over the protocol in exchange for ZRO, LayerZero's token, and the DAO dissolved itself. The case sits alongside other DAO mergers and wind-downs: here the protocol kept running while its governance ended.

What Stargate does

A user sends a token such as USDC on one chain and receives native USDC or USDT on another, rather than a wrapped copy. The protocol keeps unified liquidity pools that every connected chain draws on, and LayerZero carries the message that tells the destination pool to pay out. Applications can compose Stargate, so a DEX or yield aggregator can run a cross-chain swap inside its own interface.

Stargate V2 added Hydra, which it describes as bridging as a service: on a new chain, Stargate mints USDC.e, USDT and WETH against assets locked in its pools, giving that chain stablecoin liquidity from its first day. Hydra follows Circle's Bridged USDC Standard, so Circle can later take over the contract.

Total value locked across V1 and V2 peaked at $4.17bn in April 2022 and stood at $88m on 19 October 2026, per DefiLlama.

How the DAO governed

The docs state that Stargate was governed entirely by Stargate token holders via voting escrow, covering protocol development, integrations, tokenomics and the emissions paid to liquidity providers. Under this vote-escrow model, a holder locked STG for between 1 and 36 months and received veSTG, which could not be transferred and decayed linearly as the unlock date approached, so a longer lock carried more votes. Launch-auction buyers received veSTG as if locked for 15 months, and team and investor tokens as if locked for 24 months. Votes that changed contracts or moved treasury funds were carried out by a multisig bound to follow the result, while the Stargate Foundation handled operations, partnerships and grants.

Proposals started on the Discourse forum and moved to Snapshot once any holder of 50,000 veSTG, or an admin wallet, submitted them. Voting power was fixed at the block the proposal was created. Over 155 Snapshot votes, holders decided three kinds of question:

• Fees. In April 2025 a proposal to send most fees to stakers failed, 644k veSTG for and 1.85m against. Later that month a narrower version that set veSTG holders' share at 50% of transfer fees and investment income, with the other 50% kept as protocol-owned liquidity, passed with 2.58m for.
• Chain deployments. Each new chain or pool, such as Unichain, Sonic and Gnosis Chain, went to a vote. Holders rejected a deployment on Hedera in December 2024.
• Programmes and treasury. Holders passed the Hydra Expansion Program as a fast-track vote in January 2025, and a treasury consolidation in February 2025.

Turnout was a recurring problem. The Foundation proposed a 1.2m veSTG quorum in July 2024 that was never formalised, and in May 2025 it listed 12 proposals that had passed with over 70% approval while falling short of that quorum, 10 of them chain deployments. Holders re-ran each one as a ratification vote in July 2025, and all passed except the Cronos zkEVM pools, which 2.89m veSTG voted down.

The LayerZero acquisition

On 10 August 2025 the LayerZero Foundation posted an offer to acquire Stargate for about $110m, paid in ZRO. Every circulating STG, staked or not, would swap for 0.08634 ZRO, worth $0.1675 at ZRO's price of $1.94, against an STG market price of $0.1637 and treasury backing of $0.1444 per token. The Stargate DAO would dissolve, the Foundation would take over Stargate's operation, and Stargate's future excess revenue would buy back ZRO. The vote needed a 1.2m veSTG quorum and 70% approval.

veSTG holders objected that their multi-year locks were priced the same as liquid STG bought after the announcement. The Foundation revised the terms: veSTG holders as of the original post would receive 50% of Stargate's top-line revenue for six months, with the other 50% buying ZRO. It also said that all LayerZero Labs and Foundation members had been forbidden from voting. Angus Lamps of the Stargate Foundation backed the deal, writing that LayerZero Labs had written and audited Stargate V1, V2 and Hydra, that treasury reports showed flat revenue with "an average $300k earnings for the previous quarter", and that a rejection would need a larger budget. A forum member posted an emergency counter-proposal asking the DAO to appoint an independent representative and hire an investment bank to run an open sale.

The final proposal went to Snapshot on 17 August with the voting window extended from 3 days to 7. Four days earlier the Foundation had written that the revised text would sit for 3 days and voting would open on 20 August, and a forum member later asked why it had not.

On 20 August the Wormhole Foundation, which stewards the Wormhole cross-chain messaging protocol, asked for the vote to be suspended for five business days so it could bid. It counted the DAO treasury at $76.47m in stablecoins, $15.9m in ETH and $55m in STG, and argued the offer handed those assets over for $110m in tokens. On 22 August it offered at least $120m in USDC plus three times the projected six-month revenue for veSTG holders, paid upfront, and the next day put its cash offer at $0.1817 per STG against $0.1787 for LayerZero's at that day's ZRO price. Across Protocol's founder said Across would bid if the process slowed, and the Axelar Foundation said it was interested. The Stargate Foundation replied that a Snapshot vote cannot be paused. The rival offers never reached a vote. Wormhole's own governance is covered in its entry, Wormhole.

The vote closed on 24 August 2025: 7.22m veSTG for and 0.40m against, or 94.8% in favour, across 15,110 votes. The Stargate Foundation announced the same day that the DAO was dissolved and the forum would become read-only.

What happened to veSTG, STG and the treasury?

Under the approved terms, veSTG was unlocked and made withdrawable from the staking contract, and each STG became redeemable for 0.08634 ZRO through a fixed-rate contract that stays open indefinitely, with advance notice promised before any closure. Holders were still withdrawing from the veSTG contract on Ethereum on 19 October 2026. The LayerZero Foundation assumed ownership and operation of Stargate.

The LayerZero Foundation wrote in December 2025 that Stargate earned $2.4m in revenue from September to November 2025 and that $1.2m of it bought ZRO, and that the share going to buybacks would rise from 50% to 100% once the revenue share with former veSTG holders ended. Its buyback tracker lists monthly ZRO purchases funded by Stargate fees from September 2025 to September 2026, 2.54m ZRO for $3.68m in total.

STG still trades. Etherscan's token page, using CoinMarketCap data, showed a circulating supply of about 94m STG on 19 October 2026, against the 660.5m the Wormhole Foundation cited from the DAO's August 2025 treasury report.

Is Stargate DAO still active?

No. The stgdao.eth Snapshot space has held no vote since the acquisition proposal closed on 24 August 2025, and the forum is archived. Stargate itself still operates under the LayerZero Foundation, and its fees fund the monthly ZRO buybacks, which no token vote governs.

References

• Stargate Docs – Introduction
• Stargate Docs – Governance model
• Stargate Docs – Proposals and voting
• Stargate Docs – Launch
• Stargate Docs – Allocations and lockups
• Stargate Docs – Stake
• Stargate Docs – Hydra
• Stargate forum – LayerZero Foundation acquisition of Stargate (STG)
• Stargate forum – Emergency proposal: independent sale process
• Stargate forum – Ratification governance proposal
• Stargate forum – Balanced earnings distribution
• Stargate forum – Stargate Discourse closure
• Snapshot – stgdao.eth space
• Snapshot – LayerZero Proposes Acquisition of Stargate (STG)
• LayerZero – Understanding ZRO buybacks
• LayerZero Foundation – ZRO buyback tracker
• Etherscan – veSTG contract
• Etherscan – STG token
• DefiLlama API – Stargate Finance TVL