LayerZero Unveils Zero Blockchain, A New Layer-1 Network For Institutional Finance

LayerZero Labs is building its own Layer-1 blockchain called Zero, a standalone network designed to meet the needs of large financial institutions. According to cofounder Bryan Pellegrino, the existing interoperability protocol cannot offer the throughput, privacy, and control required by these institutions.

Zero uses zero-knowledge proofs to separate transaction execution from verification, allowing it to handle up to 2 million transactions per second per Zone. This requires solving four bottlenecks: state storage with QMDB, parallel computing scheduling with FAFO, real-time generation of zero-knowledge proofs with Jolt Pro, and high-throughput networking with SVID.

The network is backed by major financial and technology firms such as Citadel Securities, DTCC, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Google Cloud, ARK Invest, and Tether. Zero is launching with three purpose-built zones: a general-purpose Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment, a privacy-focused payments zone, and a trading-oriented zone covering multiple asset classes.

The ZRO token secures the Zero network and is tied to ATLAS, a headless exchange backend built on the Zero framework. 75% of certain fees generated through ATLAS are directed to a ZRO buy-and-burn mechanism, reducing circulating supply as the network is used.