Chainlink active addresses reach eight-month high

On-chain analytics firm Santiment recorded 282,170 active Chainlink addresses on May 9 and 264,090 on May 10, the strongest sustained activity since September 2025. The spike followed a mid-April exploit and a series of protocol migrations from LayerZero to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).

On April 18 attackers drained roughly 116,500 rsETH, about $292 million, from infrastructure tied to Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge. Kelp posted on May 5 that it would migrate rsETH to Chainlink CCIP to secure the asset and indicated LayerZero’s infrastructure had been exploited, contributing to roughly $300 million in losses across DeFi.

Solv confirmed on May 7 that it would move more than $700 million in tokenized Bitcoin to Chainlink’s CCIP.

Santiment tied the rise in active addresses to increased smart contract interactions as projects moved away from LayerZero, and wrote that the surge appeared to reflect protocol usage rather than short-term trading activity. The firm also noted that peak network activity was not limited to a single day.

On-chain data show wallets holding between 100,000 and 10 million LINK accumulated about 32.93 million tokens over the past 30 days. Approximately 13.5 million LINK was withdrawn from centralized exchanges within five weeks.

Chainlink’s CCIP enables cross-chain messaging and asset transfers between blockchains. Developers and treasury managers executed migrations and new integrations on the CCIP network, producing increased contract calls and transfers.

Following the April exploit, several projects conducted security reviews of cross-chain configurations, reassessed bridging arrangements and announced migrations to alternative cross-chain systems, with many directing assets and messaging functions to Chainlink’s CCIP.