Interoperability protocol LayerZero's native token (ZRO) surged Thursday on news that venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz's (a16z) crypto arm increased its investment in the project. The company acquired additional $55 million ZRO tokens committing to a 3-year lock-up period, general partner Ali Yahya said in an X post . A16z has been an early backer of the protocol's development firm LayerZero Labs, participating in the team's $135 million series A fundraising round in 2022 and the following $120 million series B round in 2023. ZRO advanced 10% to $2.56 following the announcement before shedding some of the gains. The token was recently up around 5% during the day, outperforming the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index and bitcoin (BTC) gains. LayerZero is a key piece of infrastructure that allows communication between isolated blockchains with cross-chain messages. The protocol underpins 125 blockchains, has facilitated over 145 million cross-chain messages and $75 billion in value transfers. Its tech supports projects such as PayPal's stablecoin, DeFi protocols Ethena and Pendle, and was selected as an issuance partner for Wyoming's stablecoin project . The investment will help the protocol expand beyond interoperability to token issuance, data management, governance and improving databases, according to an email.