Chainlink Network Activity Surges to 8-Month High as CCIP Wins DeFi Migration

Chainlink (LINK) network activity has jumped to levels last seen eight months ago. The surge coincided with the migration of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols from LayerZero to Chainlinks Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). Why is Chainlink Address Activity Surging? On-chain analytics firm Santiment recorded 282,170 active addresses on May 9. This was followed by 264,090 active LINK addresses the next day. This spike marks the strongest sustained network activity since September 2025. Chainlink Active Addresses. Source: X/Santiment The activity spike traces back to a $292 million exploit on April 18, 2026. Attackers drained roughly 116,500 rsETH from infrastructure tied to Kelp DAOs LayerZero-powered bridge. The incident triggered industry security reviews of cross-chain configurations. Kelp DAO subsequently announced plans to migrate to Chainlink CCIP. Follow us on X to get the latest news as it happens After the recent LayerZero exploit, we are taking steps to ensure rsETH is fully secure, which is why we are migrating to @chainlink CCIP.From the April 18 incident, it is clear that LayerZero's own infrastructure was exploited, resulting in $300M in losses across DeFi. Kelp (@KelpDAO) May 5, 2026 In addition, on May 7, Solv Protocol confirmed it would migrate more than $700 million in tokenized Bitcoin to CCIP. These moves represented a major shift of institutional-scale DeFi infrastructure away from LayerZero and toward Chainlinks cross-chain ecosystem, likely contributing to a sharp rise in network activity and smart contract interactions surrounding the protocol, Santiment wrote. The firm noted that the surge points to genuine protocol usage rather than purely speculative trading activity. Historically, spikes in real network usage have preceded consistent price rises, rather than short-lived pumps, it said. The increase in network activity has also coincided with strong whale accumulation. As previously reported by BeInCrypto, wallets holding between 100,000 and 10 million LINK accumulated 32.93 million tokens over the past 30 days. Additionally, around 13.5 million LINK was withdrawn from centralized exchanges within five weeks, signaling growing investor demand and reduced sell-side pressure. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch leaders and journalists provide expert insights Read the article at BeInCrypto