The Lido DAO has announced the integration of the Native Token Transfers (NTT) standard to enable the transfer of wrapped staked ETH (wstETH) to the BNB Chain. This integration leverages the interoperability infrastructure of Wormhole and Axelar, marking a significant milestone in enhancing cross-chain functionality for the largest protocol on Ethereum by total value locked (TVL), according to Wormhole.

Wormhole’s Approach to Token Transfers

Wormhole has developed a multi-bridge solution to improve the security, decentralization, and operational efficiency of token transfers. This approach ensures that the Lido DAO retains governance control over wstETH, maintaining high standards of safety and transparency. The integration is designed to support cross-chain governance, allowing Lido DAO to perform governance actions securely across different chains.

How It Works

• Lock and Mint: When users transfer wstETH from Ethereum to BNB, the BridgeManager contract locks the wstETH and sends a message to mint equivalent tokens on BNB through the Endpoint contracts managed by Wormhole and Axelar.
• Verification and Relay: Wormhole’s Guardians and Axelar’s validators verify the messages and relay attestations to their respective Endpoints on BNB. The BridgeManager 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. Alternatively, the framework can be deployed in “burning” mode to create 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

Developers and projects interested in going multichain can explore the Github repository or contact Wormhole to leverage the open and flexible standard trusted by the industry’s high-value and systemically-important crypto assets.

Learn More

To learn more about NTT, watch a 15-minute workshop given by Wormhole Foundation Product Lead, Nikhil Suri: Watch here.

About Wormhole

Wormhole is a leading interoperability platform that powers multichain applications and bridges at scale. It 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 through over 1 billion cross-chain messages. To learn more about Wormhole, follow on Twitter, join the Discord, or read the blog.

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