The LayerZero community had been speculating about a token for months.

Blockchain infrastructure provider LayerZero Labs will have a token in the first half of 2024, said in a Thursday post on X (formerly Twitter).

In the post, Vancouver, Canada-based LayerZero noted that its community had been speculating about the creation of a token for months.

“We’ve heard the community discussion over the last few months and the lack of clear communication around this,” the post said. “We’ll state now in no uncertain terms that there will be a LayerZero token. Its distribution is something we’re committed to getting right and expect it to happen within the first half of 2024.”

LayerZero has always been built with the ability to have a native token within the protocol, as can be seen in the immutable code launched on day 1. We’ve heard the community discussion over the last few months and the lack of clear communication around this. We’ll state now in…

— LayerZero Labs (@LayerZero_Labs) December 7, 2023

The announcement comes as LayerZero uses its ample venture capital to improve interoperability and cross-chain messaging infrastructure, enabling decentralized application developers to reach different blockchains more securely.

Demand for so-called throughput applications, such as gaming and media apps, has risen steadily in recent years as the wider crypto ecosystem has grown, yet the infrastructure for crosschain functioning has lagged. Decentralized exchanges PancakeSwap and Uniswap are among the onchain applications using LayerZero.

In less than a week this spring, LayerZero closed two, separate venture capital rounds totaling $255 million, in the process tripling its valuation to $3 billion. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the venture capital arm of crypto exchange giant FTX and Sequoia Capital co-led the first $135 million and was involved in the second $120 million funding.

Those raises followed just a year after LayerZero raised $2 million in seed money and eight months after a $6 million Series A round.