Chainlink activity hits eight-month high as DeFi shifts to CCIP

Chainlink saw 282,170 active addresses on May 9 and 264,090 on May 10, according to on-chain analytics firm Santiment. Santiment said those figures mark the strongest sustained network activity since September 2025.

The rise in activity followed an April 18 exploit that drained roughly 116,500 rsETH from infrastructure tied to Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-powered bridge. On-chain estimates put the loss at about $292 million. On May 5, Kelp posted on X: “we are migrating to @chainlink CCIP” as part of steps to secure rsETH after the breach.

Solv Protocol confirmed on May 7 plans to move more than $700 million in tokenized Bitcoin to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, or CCIP. Those announcements came as several teams reviewed cross-chain security and examined alternatives to their existing bridges and messaging layers.

Santiment wrote that the activity spike appears to reflect real protocol usage rather than speculative trading. “Historically, spikes in real network usage have preceded consistent price rises, rather than short-lived pumps,” the firm added.

On-chain holders also shifted holdings during the period. Wallets holding between 100,000 and 10 million LINK accumulated about 32.93 million LINK over the past 30 days. Approximately 13.5 million LINK left centralized exchanges in the five weeks up to early May, reducing immediate sell-side pressure.

Chainlink’s CCIP is a cross-chain messaging and token-transfer protocol designed as an alternative to existing bridge designs. LayerZero is a competing messaging protocol that many DeFi applications used prior to the April incident. Teams selecting cross-chain infrastructure consider factors such as security architecture, oracle integrations and operational controls.

Market participants are monitoring whether continued adoption of CCIP by large DeFi projects will keep Chainlink’s active-address counts at these levels and how the shift affects LINK liquidity and cross-chain flows.