RFC: Adopt Chainlink CCIP for Cross-Chain Bridging to Solana

hOHMwardbound

Summary

This proposal seeks authorization for Olympus to utilize Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) as canonical cross-chain asset bridging infrastructure, beginning with Solana. Olympus previously approved Solana POL deployment in OIP-173; this proposal aims to activate that deployment using CCIP as the bridging mechanism.

While Solana will serve as the initial deployment, additional CCIP-supported chains may be integrated over time, subject to governance approval.

Background

Chainlink CCIP provides a decentralized and extensible framework for cross-chain token transfers. It enables Olympus to maintain full ownership and control over token contracts, bridging logic, and token pools. CCIP also supports customizable implementation logic, including rate limits and transfer configurations, without vendor lock-in or reliance on external liquidity providers.

Chainlink CCIP is secured by the same decentralized oracle network infrastructure that has powered over $20 trillion in onchain transaction value and includes layered risk management features such as circuit breakers and onchain verification of token ownership.

Proposal

Provides a temperature check for authorization of Chainlink CCIP canonical infrastructure for cross-chain asset bridging, with the intention of initiating Solana as the first CCIP-enabled chain for OHM.

Following a successful Snapshot vote, Olympus will then proceed forward with securing an audit for the bridge. Following audit and remediations the bridge activation will be proposed via on-chain governance.

Motivation

A key driver of this proposal is Olympus’ long-standing relationship with Chainlink, which has provided OHM price feeds free of charge for over four years. These feeds power the PRICE module, which supports both Range-Bound Stability (RBS) and the Emissions Manager. As part of this expanded partnership, Chainlink has committed to enabling lower-latency OHM feeds when needed, along with co-marketing and broader ecosystem support.

Currently, Olympus uses LayerZero to bridge OHM across Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, and Berachain, but does not rely on Stargate. All bridging is routed through the Olympus frontend, allowing for a backend infrastructure change with minimal user disruption.

While we continue to value LayerZero, Chainlink’s infrastructure, sustained support, and alignment with Olympus’ vision make this transition both practical and well-timed.

Zeus

I'm personally in favor of this proposal and would like to share my thoughts on why.

I think the criteria for assessing infrastructure such as this should be based on four core tenets, listed in order of importance: security, functionality, switching cost, and external benefit. The current provider (LayerZero) and proposed provider (CCIP) both score very high on both security and functionality -- they are of course separate products, but both serve users very well. As such, the thinking shifts to the third and fourth criteria.

On switching costs, for better or worse OHM bridging is not served on any frontend outside of olympusdao.finance. This means that users are already used to using that endpoint, which would continue to function using CCIP in the same manner as it does today. The main difference from a user-experience standpoint becomes using ccip.chain.link to track txs in transit instead of layerzeroscan, and I personally place low weight onto this as a cost.

External benefit is I think where this shines and why I am excited about the proposal. Chainlink is our oldest partner and they have consistently been great to us. I think my enthusiasm around expanding this relationship is shared our their end and ultimately makes a ton of sense for us both. Most tangibly on our end, lower-latency price feeds will allow consumption to expand beyond the PRICE module to third-party apps like lending markets that are much more sensitive to volatility and accuracy. This is especially useful given the composability of Cooler V2 in this context.

The ultimate vision that this proposal pushes us today is Olympus as the monetary layer with Chainlink as the data layer. If we can expand the role of the latter within the former, and the former within the latter, I think we will all be very well served.