Wormhole forcibly raises prices and intervenes, can LayerZero's acquisition of Stargate still advance?

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

"LayerZero" that has entered the official voting process The "acquisition of Stargate" proposal suddenly changed.

On August 21, the Wormhole Foundation, a direct competitor of LayerZero, publicly announced on X that LdayerZero's acquisition offer of about $110 million for Stargate underestimated Stargate's protocol assets and growth, so Wormhole plans to submit a higher offer and requested a 5-day suspension of the current snapshot voting in order to improve the bidding process and protect STG Holder benefits.

Background summary: LayerZero launches acquisition

LayerZero's acquisition proposal for Stargate dates back to August 11 - refer to "LayerZero proposes to acquire Stargate: Tokens both soar by 20%+, but this group strongly opposes it".

In the early morning of the same 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 proposes to exchange all STG in circulation (including STG in staking/voting) for ZRO at a ratio of 1 STG : 0.08634 ZRO at a price of $0.1675 per STG (actually slightly higher than the market price at the time) and $1.94 per ZRO at the time of publication. 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 announcement of the proposal, the official tweets of LayerZero and Stargate frequently interacted, and the two sides talked about "win-win cooperation"However, a closer look at Stargate's governance forum discussions shows that the vast majority of Stargate opposes the acquisition proposal, believing that LayerZero's offer is too undervalued.

Early developments: Voting launched, big investors crushed

August 18, the proposal officially launched a vote on Snapshot, and STG holders will jointly decide whether to accept the takeover offer. Instead of raising the acquisition offer compared to the original proposal, LayerZero announced that it would share a 50% share of Stargate's total revenue over the next six months to veSTG holders (i.e., users who voted directly).

After the voting was launched, not only did it quickly break the minimum number of votes, but the approval rate once soared to more than 97% (according to the rules, it will pass if it exceeds 70% at the end). LayerZero co-founder Bryan Pellegrino even proudly said during his participation in CounterParty's podcast: "This is the most voted vote in Stargate's history. ”

Although many Stargate community members oppose the offer, LayerZero and Stargate are fully bound back-end protocols and front-end products, and it is difficult for the two projects to be regarded as two separate entities, and even half of the Stargate Foundation's board of directors are ...... by LayerZeroCombined with the interactive discourse between LayerZero and Stargate, it is not difficult to imagine that bilateral stakeholders already control enough voting power, to put it bluntly, this is a vote that is "destined to pass, but needs to have a transition".

Wormhole's conspiracy: Even if you can't grab it, you have to be disgusted

Perhaps even LayerZero and Stargate did not expect that Wormhole would intervene at such a critical moment.

As of the time of publication, unlike the "harmonious scene" of frequent interaction between the two parties after LayerZero's proposal for the acquisition, after Wormhole proposed an intention to acquire, Stargate's official Twitter account did not post any relevant news, and LayerZero only co-founder Bryan suspected of responding: "This cannot happen." ”

As of publication, Wormhole has not yet made a formal offer, and the reason is laughable - Wormhole claims that it needs more time to conduct due diligence on Stargate's valuation because they are not as familiar with Stargate as LayerZero, and are so familiar with the latter's board ...... that it accounts for half of the latter's board

Based on the current situation, the subsequent development of the incident is nothing more than the following four scenarios, and in either case, Wormhole will be happy to see it.

• The first scenario is that Stargate suspends voting, which then enters the bidding between Wormhole and LayerZero, ultimately assuming Wormhole wins. In this way, Wormhole will directly take away the core products of its biggest competitors and thus grab more market share.
• The second scenario is assuming that LayerZero wins the bid, or LayerZero unilaterally raises the offer and promotes the proposal, so that LayerZero will pay more funds to STG holders, and Wormhole can watch the opponent consume more without paying a penny.
• The third scenario is that Stargate ignores Wormhole's offer on the grounds that the process has been initiated, and the proposal will continue to advance in its original state (the approval rating is still exceeded), so assuming that LayerZero completes the acquisition, STG, which misses out on higher offers, will inevitably be annoyed by this, and Wormhole is happy to see the community split on LayerZero's side.
• The fourth scenario is also Stargate's forced voting, assuming that the proposal ultimately fails due to opposition from the Stargate community (the current approval rate is still over 88%, and the possibility of failure is extremely low), and the Wormhole filibuster plan succeeds.

Overall, I would personally prefer the second and third scenarios, after all, Stargate is the core product of LayerZero, and the latter is absolutely unwilling to bear the consequences of losing this product.

DMH, Fluid's COO, summed up the current situation in a nutshell: "Apparently Stargate and LayerZero agreed before the proposal; Wormhole was so angry that LayerZero actually bought Singapore with a bag of rice; Therefore, Wormhole chose to raise the price in an attempt to disrupt LayerZero's acquisition plan; But Stargate will eventually be absorbed by LayerZero, and the market is well aware of this, so there will be no drama.

Wormhole may have known before the offer that the final result was doomed, but it is simply a top-notch conspiracy to make its biggest competitor extremely disgusting and have nothing to lose.