Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said Tuesday she has joined the advisory board of LayerZero (CRYPTO: ZRO), a cross-chain interoperability protocol she views as critical in driving a “multi-decade shift” to on-chain finance.

Wood Relishing New Opportunity

Wood said in an X post that the stint marks her first advisory board role “in a long time” and no “better opportunity” could have come along.

“Finance is moving on-chain, and I believe LayerZero will be one of the core innovation platforms supporting this multi-decade shift,” the veteran investor said.

The advisory board also includes Michael Blaugurung, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE), and Caroline Butler, Former Head of Digital Assets at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE:BK).

Tether Makes ‘Strategic Investment’

The move coincided with a “strategic investment” by Tether (CRYPTO: USDT) in LayerZero Labs, the development company behind the LayerZero protocol. Details on the investment type or scale, however, were not revealed.

Tether recognized LayerZero’s role in enabling cross-chain movement of USDT, the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

LayerZero is a permissionless protocol enabling the transfer of data and assets across different blockchains. The platform bridged assets worth more than $8 billion over the last month, according to data from DeFiLlama.

Price Action: At the time of writing, ZRO was exchanging hands at $2.31, up 20% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro. Year-to-date, the token has surged 89%.

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