Written by: Techub News整理

Introduction

In the recent 642nd episode of the Epicenter podcast, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (known as V God) engaged in an in-depth dialogue with the founder of Nosis (one of the podcast hosts) about the "Ethereum Economic Zone." This conversation originated from a fireside chat at the Dappcon conference and was followed up with technical discussions by the Epicenter team. The EEZ is not directly constructed by the Ethereum Foundation but is a key initiative led by the Nosis and Zisk teams, receiving funding and ideological support from EF. In the current context of Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem fragmentation and user experience disconnection, EEZ proposes an ambitious vision: through technological innovation, to enable hundreds of independent L2 networks to interoperate seamlessly and synchronously as a single network, thereby regaining the composable magic of Ethereum's early "money Lego."

Summary

• The core of EEZ is redefining Layer 2 to achieve cross-chain synchronous composability through real-time ZK proofs, allowing contracts on different chains to interact instantly as if they were on the same chain.
• EEZ positions Ethereum as the ultimate "economic operating system" and leading chain, responsible for the final sequencing of cross-chain transactions, while participant chains must acknowledge Ethereum's ultimate authority while maintaining autonomy.
• This architecture opens doors for privacy chains, high-performance DeFi chains, oracle-specific chains, and even enterprise/government chains, enabling them to securely and cost-effectively access the Ethereum ecosystem without the need to rebuild infrastructure.
• EEZ may change the economic model of existing Rollups (especially smaller and application-specific chains), liberating them from the competition of "replicating everything Ethereum" and shifting focus to providing differentiated value.
• Technical feasibility is based on generating state proofs within a single Ethereum block time (12 seconds), with the Nosis team currently achieving proof speeds of 2-3 seconds, and mainnet contracts expected to be deployed by the end of August.

Vitalik Buterin's EEZ Vision: A Super Network Beyond Scalability

In the opening of the interview, Vitalik Buterin (V God) articulated his core understanding of the Ethereum Economic Zone. He believes that EEZ is essentially a rethinking and upgrading of the Layer 2 concept. While the current L2 solutions have succeeded in reducing fees, they have also brought about the issue of ecosystem fragmentation—over 200 L2 networks are isolated from each other, losing the synchronous composability that Ethereum once prided itself on.

Buterin pointed out that the ideal L2 should be deeply integrated into Ethereum, not just associatively related at the branding level. The goal of EEZ is to achieve such deep integration, allowing users and developers to clearly perceive this connection and benefit from it. Its core advantages lie in: closely integrating Ethereum's market and user base, significantly alleviating the infrastructure burden on project parties, and achieving synchronous composability between L2s. With the security assured by zero-knowledge proofs, EEZ aims to simultaneously achieve higher integration, greater capabilities, and lower costs, creating a win-win situation for all parties.

When asked what forms networks anchored on Ethereum might take in the next five to ten years, Buterin painted a diverse picture:

• Privacy Chains: Such as Aztec, Zcash, Tornado Cash, etc., they are essentially "privacy L2s," focusing on private programmability, a direction that is underestimated but crucial.
• High-Performance Specialized Chains: Providing extremely high TPS for specific use cases (e.g., prediction markets, order book DEXs), such as dYdX. He humorously noted that all DeFi primitives can be seen as specific instances of prediction markets in some sense.
• Integrated Oracle Chains: Buterin believes that the security of current oracles is "the skeleton of Ethereum," which lags significantly behind the rigor achieved in the L2 space. Integrating oracles into L2 can expand their security base and is more of a priority than pushing L2 into a "second phase."
• Enterprise/Government Chains: Approaching from the other end, adding proofs to existing centralized, trust-dependent systems (like supply chains, finance, healthcare, voting) to provide better guarantees for users—Orion's Interfold project is an example of this.

Regarding whether nations or governments would adopt Ethereum as a settlement layer, Buterin held an open attitude. He observed that government blockchain projects often start from building consortium chains, but may eventually quiet down due to a lack of practical utility, later returning in a more pragmatic manner (like issuing NFTs on the mainnet). The key lies in stripping away excessive philosophical baggage, treating the choice between L1 or L2 as a technical decision: What needs to interoperate closely? What kind of scalability and privacy is required? EEZ, issuing assets on the mainnet, or bridging into EEZ are all possible solutions.

On the fundamental choice of placing censorship resistance above speed, cost, and user recourse at the base layer of Ethereum, Buterin acknowledged this is a difficult trade-off. He believes that if the base layer offers too little, key features like interoperability could be "captured" by centralized providers, leading to applications forming closed gardens where user accounts are locked within a single application, unable to enjoy the benefits of a multi-application ecosystem. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure features like interoperability and censorship resistance at the base layer to form a truly competitive market at the user level. EEZ is indeed an important effort to promote higher-level interoperability from theory to practice and to establish relevant standards.

Technical Core: How is Synchronous Composability Achieved?

The founder of Nosis subsequently conducted an in-depth analysis of the technical principles of EEZ. He reviewed the development history of Ethereum: The early single network brought unlimited composable "money Lego" magic, but high Gas fees forced scaling solutions to move towards Layer 2. While L2 has successfully reduced fees, the cost has been the migration of most computations, leading to network fragmentation and the loss of composability.

EEZ's solution is to use real-time proofs to allow two networks to "synchronously compose." This means that a smart contract on one network can call a contract on another network, receiving a response and using that result within the same block, just as if they were on the same network. This has become technically possible now due to the core capability of being able to prove the state of another chain within the building time of one block (12 seconds for Ethereum).

The founder of Nosis illustrated this with an example of a cross-chain transaction: Suppose a user wants to send ETH from the Nosis chain to the Base chain. In the current asynchronous bridging model, this involves long waits, final state confirmation, messaging, and claim processes. In EEZ's synchronous model, this is simplified to an atomic transaction: at the same block height, the user's balance on the Nosis chain decreases while their balance on the Base chain increases, all without an intermediate bridging contract. This atomicity guarantees that the transaction either fully succeeds or fully rolls back.

More complex use cases, such as depositing USDC and ETH from the Nosis chain into a liquidity pool on the Uniswap chain, can also be completed in a single atomic operation. The key is that all participating L2 networks and the Ethereum mainnet will concurrently build blocks containing the relevant transactions at the same block height, with a coordinator ensuring they land simultaneously. This requires all participating chains to acknowledge Ethereum as the ultimate authority of the "leading chain." If Ethereum undergoes a reorganization (though the probability is extremely low), all cross-chain transactions depending on that block would also need to roll back accordingly to maintain state consistency.

In the EEZ architecture, transaction sequencing is divided into two levels: transactions within each L2 network are still sequenced by their own sequencers, while the part involving cross-chain interaction, called "interconnected calls," is sequenced by the Ethereum mainnet as the ultimate sequencing layer. This design ensures global consistency and atomicity for cross-chain transactions while maintaining the autonomy of each chain.

Application Prospects and Ecological Impact

EEZ opens doors for various application types that have previously struggled to develop fully within the Ethereum ecosystem. The founder of Nosis is particularly excited about this: EEZ allows all these chains to view Ethereum as the ultimate economic operating system of the internet.

• Enterprise/Government Chains: Projects like banking consortium chains or national digital currencies are typically reluctant to build on fully permissionless infrastructure. EEZ allows these permissioned chains to synchronize and compose with Ethereum (or its subsets) without having to choose between "extreme decentralization" and "complete isolation."
• Privacy Chains: Privacy chains like Aztec, while offering private computation, have limited throughput. EEZ enables users to store sensitive data like identity on Aztec and only present zero-knowledge proofs to other chains when needed (such as proving membership or reputation), achieving a balance between privacy and efficiency.
• Oracle Chains: Current oracles publish massive data directly to the mainnet, which is costly. By using dedicated oracle chains, data can remain off-chain and only be called via synchronous composition when needed, implementing "pay-per-use," lowering the barriers to entry, and enriching the oracle ecosystem.

EEZ will also have a profound impact on MEV and network economic models. As cross-chain arbitrage shifts from high-risk, asynchronous operations to atomic, no-risk transactions, market efficiency will significantly increase, ultimately resulting in better execution prices for users. While MEV opportunities at the Ethereum mainnet level may increase, each participating chain can autonomously design block building rules to protect users from harmful MEV exploitation.

For existing Rollups, especially successful large general-purpose Rollups (like Base and Arbitrum), migrating to EEZ involves engineering and economic trade-offs. On the engineering side, it requires adapting to real-time proofs, supporting reorganization, etc.; economically, these "mini Ethereums" have established self-sufficient ecosystems and substantial revenues (like sequencer fees). However, for the vast majority of smaller Rollups or application-specific chains, the economic appeal of joining EEZ is immense. They no longer need to spend significant resources replicating existing infrastructure on Ethereum (stablecoins, fiat channels, lending markets, etc.) and can focus on providing unique value while having immediate access to the liquidity of the entire ecosystem through EEZ.

The founder of Nosis predicts that the first networks to join EEZ will be smaller ones, with Nosis Chain acting as a "guinea pig" to practice first. For DApps, unless they are computationally intensive or very large applications (like Robinhood or Polymarket), deploying on existing EEZ member chains may be more economical and efficient than building their own application chain.

Similarities and Differences with Ecosystems like Cosmos and Future Prospects

The vision of EEZ—shared security, application chain sovereignty, inter-chain interoperability—shares similarities with the narratives of ecosystems like Cosmos and Polkadot. When asked about key differences, the founder of Nosis pointed to a core aspect: economic relevance. Connecting to the Ethereum mainnet means directly accessing its massive liquidity, a fundamental advantage not possessed by other attempts like the Atom economic zone. Additionally, Ethereum’s longer decision-making cycles and stronger social cohesion also facilitate the establishment and advancement of complex agreements.

Regarding Ethereum's future role, the founder of Nosis presented a challenging perspective: In the long term, ordinary end users might have no reason to directly use the Ethereum mainnet. This is because prioritizing censorship resistance also means that no protection can be provided to users (such as recourse for fraudulent losses). He believes this may ultimately suit only a small portion of technology experts within the global population. Ethereum is more likely to evolve into a "dumb pipe" or a neutral base layer, while rich, distinctive user experiences will be built on various L2 and application chains above EEZ.

In terms of cost structures, he provided a rough model: Internal transaction costs within L2 are 1 unit, cross-chain transaction costs between L2 chains are 10 units, and transactions involving the Ethereum mainnet are 100 units. Therefore, coexisting with high-frequency interacting DApps or users within the same network remains economically viable, but the ability to call upon the entire EEZ ecosystem at any time provides unprecedented flexibility.

The development process of EEZ is steadily progressing. The founder of Nosis revealed that mainnet contracts are currently undergoing audits, with deployment expected by the end of August. Nosis Chain plans to join EEZ with limited functionality before the end of the year, achieving complete shared liquidity with Ethereum (though infinite nested calls are not yet supported). The entire project has clear goals and a limited scope, and full functionality is anticipated to be achieved in about the next 9 months. For developers, application development networks are already in place, and interested parties can obtain the latest information and participate in construction through the EEZ official website and Telegram groups.

EEZ represents a paradigm shift: from pursuing the ultimate performance of a single chain to building a tightly coupled and efficiently coordinated network of networks. It attempts to address the fragmentation issues arising from the ecological expansion of Ethereum while preserving its core values (decentralization and security), paving the way for the next wave of large-scale applications.

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