Bryan Pellegrino is the CEO and co-founder of LayerZero, a cross-chain interoperability platform that enables developers to create decentralized applications (dApps) that work seamlessly across multiple blockchains. ^[1]

Education

Pellegrino graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a BS in Computer Science in 2008. ^[1]

Career

Pellegrino started his career as the COO and co-founder of Coder Den, a tech company that designed and implemented full mobile applications, where he worked with Caleb Banister, LayerZero Labs co-founder. In June 2011, he served as CEO of BuzzDraft, where he worked with developers to establish marketing channels and partnerships. In March 2015, he became the lead engineer for Rho Impact (formerly Rho AI), a company that aids organizations to make an impact using AI. He is currently an entrepreneur in residence, working on various projects. He later co-founded OpenToken, an app supporting next-generation token projects, and worked there until August 2019. In February 2021, he co-founded LayerZero Labs with Caleb Banister and Ryan Zarick. ^[1]

Interviews

LayerZero Labs

In March 2023, Shitcoin.com interviewed Pellegrino about LayerZero Labs, his start in crypto, and the project’s future plans. He started with his background in crypto: ^[2]

“I mean same way that most of us did, coming from a poker background, right? So, like, I heard about Bitcoin in 2010 or 2011. Online poker, like Black Friday, happened. I was out of a job, moved to Montreal for the summer, but then came back and, like, started a company. So, I actually didn't touch crypto. I knew about it. Everyone in poker was using it to move money around the sites because we were all bricked from payment processors, but I didn't really touch it until 2013. So, I started a DFS site, kind of like the inception of DraftKings or FanDuel, that era. It got acquired when that whole industry rolled up. Then, like, in 2013, I got into crypto a bunch. I was mining, you know, racks of Bitcoin miners in my garage with my brother and brother-in-law, trading all the old school coins like Razer and all this stuff. I passed on the Ethereum ICO for 10 Bitcoin with, you know, an hour to go because my brother convinced me we should buy a Sync masternode instead. We were just in it for a little while, and then, like, in 2015, everything died. So, I went back, played poker, did some academic research for a bit, and started a company in the space at the end of 2016 or early 2017 with Dan Chen from Intrinsic.”

“Then, I did the full 2017-2018 cycle, seeing the boom and bust with everybody else, which was just chaos. Then, on-chain smart contracts actually started doing things, and that's when I got into writing contracts or working with Ryan and Caleb, building stuff. So, we were just messing around with a bunch of different things like on-chain trading. The miners were colluding against us when we were doing arbitrage and triangle ARB.”

He then defined what LayerZero was: ^[2]

“In the more technical sense, the way I think about LayerZero is similar to how I think about a packet on the internet. What we were trying to create is a base primitive for moving information. A packet on the internet involves one computer generating state data or information, consisting of bytes, which are then moved to another computer that ingests the bytes, interprets them, and performs an action. This is essentially compute, payload, bytes, and compute. From this base primitive, you can build various applications—it's the foundation for communication and everything we do. LayerZero is arbitrary contract invocation with a bytes array: invoke a contract here, take the resulting bytes, and invoke a contract there. Simply put, it's messaging between chains. You can send any arbitrary data, such as bridging an NFT or asset value. People have even done creative things like killing a boss in a game on a subnet of one chain and sending a message to mutate the metadata of an NFT on Ethereum, which then syncs to your Twitter hexagon profile picture.”

When asked about cross-chain bridging, Pellegrino responded: ^[2]

“I think it's very likely to be a "winner take most" scenario. Nobody wants to write six different interfaces for different applications, as it makes the process a nightmare with each chain requiring its own protocol or standard. Rollups function well because there is a canonical contract on Ethereum that serves as the source of truth. This is why you can go from Arbitrum to Ethereum and back, but not elsewhere, which is where third-party bridges come in. Stargate's model was built to address the issues with wrapped assets, which carry risk for users rather than liquidity providers (LPs). In DeFi, LPs usually carry the risk, while users simply use the protocol without worrying about the underlying risks.”

Toward the end of the interview, he shared his thoughts on the 2023 landscape of crypto VCs: ^[2]

“The current environment remains tight, with early-stage companies facing high valuations. Similar to past cycles, there is more capital available than there are strong founders, leading investors to pursue high-profile deals for brand value and capital allocation. Despite this, fundraising is still reasonably active. However, differentiation is now more crucial than before. Our approach has been atypical; we never actively sought fundraising but were preempted in all our rounds. In our last funding round, which was for $135 million, we received $1.65 billion in commitments, making it extremely oversubscribed. We approached this strategically, aiming to include key DeFi stakeholders and secure warm introductions to integrate closely with major DeFi protocols, as we believed this would drive our success.”

“I told all the VCs upfront that we were confident in our product and didn’t need technical advice or coaching on development. Instead, I sought guidance on building a world-class company. For our last round, we secured leads from Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, and FTX, which we viewed as having strong operational expertise. We aimed to be selective about what we gained from each investment round and why we needed it.”

LayerZero V2

In February 2024, Still Early interviewed Pellegrino about LayerZero’s recent V2 update, starting with V1’s history: ^[3]

“LayerZero’s V1 came into place because, honestly, it was not something we ever wanted to build but couldn’t find anything suitable. We wanted to create something that wasn’t just a transport layer and made sense for users. We found existing solutions broken, so we started to analyze what was wrong with them. We identified two main issues: first, the prevalent use of upgradeable patterns, which conflicted with our value of immutability and led to numerous hacks. Second, the hub-and-spoke model, where all economic security was centralized in one layer, which was meant to be the source of truth but led to problems.”

“We believed the hub-and-spoke model was unscalable, as seen with various attempts to secure $300 million to $1 billion of economic security, none of which succeeded in scaling further. Securing hundreds of billions of dollars would require scaling the economic security model to match, which seemed improbable and capital inefficient. Therefore, Ryan and I, my co-founder, took a highly adversarial approach to developing V1. We rigorously challenged every idea, breaking it down and identifying its flaws over months. The three core principles we settled on were: first, protocols like Uniswap need centralization and immutability guarantees; second, contracts must be 100% immutable, ensuring protocols do not rely on potentially faulty code changes that could compromise security; and third, we observed that hacks like those of Nomad, Wormhole, and Socket all stemmed from upgradability issues.”

He then discussed why the project switched from Oracles to relays: ^[3]

“In V1, oracles and relayers played key roles. Oracles could vary from IBC-style validators to single-node setups like Chainlink, which, despite its name, served as an oracle within the LayerZero network along with other groups. We anticipated the creation of meta-oracles, which are customizable combinations of oracles, such as Chainlink and Google Cloud. These could be set to various configurations, like requiring a majority agreement from multiple oracles. Relayers were designed to handle gas abstraction, provide transaction proofs, and execute transactions on the other side. However, we discovered that most users did not create these meta-oracles due to complexity and effort involved. Instead, the system was often simplified to a two-out-of-two multisig setup, leading to misunderstandings and criticism. Despite these challenges, we accepted the misconceptions and continued to refine our approach.”

When asked about LayerZero’s core ethos and crypto philosophy, Pellegrino responded: ^[3]

“After nearly 14 years in the space, starting with a strong libertarian focus on self-sovereignty and eliminating intermediaries, I’ve observed significant shifts in priorities. Initially, the aim was to build systems with full immutability and on-chain logic, as seen with Stargate, which aimed to be a stable, Uniswap-like liquidity solution between chains. However, the market has shifted towards making trade-offs, especially for better pricing. Many solutions, including those for bridging and DEX aggregators, now perform significant computation off-chain. Users are increasingly willing to accept lower liveness and uptime in exchange for enhanced security and better pricing, reflecting a broader trend towards balancing security with practical trade-offs.”

“At the protocol level, there is still strong alignment with Ethereum and Bitcoin. However, as you move further down the stack, especially with layer threes and similar solutions, more trade-offs are being made. The core infrastructure remains robust, but the messaging layer's importance in the expanding ecosystem of layer twos and layer ones cannot be overstated. Despite the crucial role of messaging, many are willing to accept upgradeable patterns and centralized systems, which can compromise censorship resistance. This parallels issues seen in traditional trading, where entities like Citadel may front-run trades, highlighting ongoing concerns about fairness and transparency in high-frequency trading systems.”

Panels

LayerZero

At ETHDenver 2022, Pellegrino discussed the challenges and solutions in building cross-chain and multi-chain applications. He highlighted the systemic risks associated with current cross-chain solutions that rely on a central consensus mechanism, which can be exploited if compromised. Pellegrino emphasized the need for customizable security parameters tailored to specific application needs rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. He advocated for a modular system where security choices are made at the application layer, reducing systemic risk and improving capital efficiency. Additionally, he noted the industry's shift from focusing solely on value transfer to encompassing broader messaging and synchronization needs across chains. ^[4]

Cross-Chain Evaluation

At Crypto Startup School 2023 (CSS 23), Pellegrino discussed the evaluation of cross-chain messaging protocols and the broader challenges of building secure protocols in the blockchain space. He highlighted the rapid growth of cross-chain messaging, the centralization issues, and the trade-offs between performance and security. Pellegrino emphasized three foundational principles for successful protocols: immutability, permissionlessness, and censorship resistance. He explained the importance of these principles in maintaining protocol security and user trust, using examples like Uniswap and Ethereum to illustrate the risks and necessary considerations in protocol design and implementation. ^[5]

Connecting Subnets

At Avalanche Summit 2022, Pellegrino discussed using LayerZero to connect Avalanche subnets, emphasizing the importance of generic messaging over simple value transfer for more complex applications. He highlighted the need for seamless messaging between chains to avoid the need for each project to develop its infrastructure, which can be inefficient. Pellegrino explained that LayerZero provides a primitive messaging layer, enabling chains to deploy their bridges without dealing with the associated security and maintenance challenges. He also touched on the launch of Stargate, a new type of bridge using native asset pools to facilitate liquidity transfer, and the broad range of use cases beyond DeFi, including gaming and NFTs. ^[6]