Gnosis and Zisk with co-funding from the Ethereum Foundation have announced the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) at EthCC in Cannes.
This is a new L1-to-L2 framework designed to tackle Ethereum’s L2 fragmentation—not a pure scaling issue, but the problem of dozens of isolated rollups creating siloed liquidity, duplicated infrastructure, and reliance on slow and costly bridges. A new L2 launches roughly every 19 days on average, fragmenting capital and complicating user/developer experiences across the ecosystem which has over 20 active L2s securing tens of billions in TVL.
The EEZ aims to make participating rollups feel like extensions of a single unified Ethereum rather than separate islands. Smart contracts on an EEZ rollup can directly call contracts on Ethereum mainnet or other EEZ rollups in a single atomic transaction, with the same execution guarantees as on L1. No bridges, no multi-step processes, no trust assumptions for cross-chain calls.
Liquidity pools, stablecoins, DeFi positions, etc., become shared across the zone. Capital can flow and be used composably without fragmentation. Developers deploy once and interact seamlessly; apps don’t need replication across chains. No new tokens introduced; everything settles back to Ethereum’s security.
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Real-Time Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Powered by Zisk’s proving stack from Jordi Baylina, Circom creator and Polygon zkEVM co-founder. This enables fast verification of cross-rollup and mainnet interactions without compromising security or introducing intermediaries. Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst put it simply: Ethereum doesn’t have a scaling problem. It has a fragmentation problem. The EEZ is designed to do the opposite. One Ethereum, not a hundred islands.
It positions itself as distinct from or complementary to efforts like Optimism’s Superchain, Polygon’s AggLayer, or the Ethereum Foundation’s earlier Interop Layer proposals. The emphasis on real-time ZK proving aims for stronger atomicity and fewer trust assumptions. Existing L2s and new rollups could opt into the framework, and Gnosis Chain itself is mentioned as potentially integrating.
EEZ Alliance: An informal collective to coordinate standards and adoption. Founding members include Aave, Flashbots, Nethermind, Centrifuge, Safe, CoW Swap, Titan, Beaver Build, Monerium, and xStocks spanning DeFi, RWA, infrastructure, etc. Governed as credibly neutral infrastructure via a Swiss non-profit. All software will be free and open-source. Co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation, notable given recent grant pauses.
Technical specifications and performance benchmarks are expected in the coming weeks. If successful, the EEZ could significantly improve UX for users; no more bridge headaches for moving assets or using apps across chains, boost capital efficiency in DeFi and beyond, strengthen Ethereum as the shared settlement and security layer, and make the overall EVM ecosystem more competitive against monolithic or more unified alternatives.
It doesn’t solve all of Ethereum’s challenges like sequencer decentralization debates remain active, but it directly targets one of the biggest pain points in the rollup-centric roadmap. Adoption will depend on how many projects join the alliance and how quickly the ZK tech delivers on low-latency synchronous calls. This fits into broader Ethereum coordination efforts.
Builders are actively working on making the fragmented L2 landscape feel more like one cohesive economic zone. Early reactions on X and in coverage highlight excitement around reduced fragmentation, though execution details will matter. Technical deep dives should emerge soon.
