Author: The Ethereum Economic Zone

Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: L2 solves the scalability problem of Ethereum while creating a new problem: every chain becomes an island, liquidity is fragmented, and users incur costs every time they cross chains. EEZ, funded by the Ethereum Foundation and jointly initiated by Gnosis and Zisk, has a core commitment to synchronous composability between L1 and L2—contracts can be called atomically across chains, no longer relying on bridges for connection. This is one of the most worthy technical proposals to track against the backdrop of the discussion on the Ethereum roadmap heating up.

The full text is as follows:

The L2 ecosystem of Ethereum solves one problem while creating another problem.

The scalability problem is basically solved. Rollups are effective, transaction costs have decreased, and throughput has increased. That part is progressing smoothly.

What is not progressing smoothly is that each L2 has turned into its own island. Independent liquidity, independent cross-chain bridges, independent wallet integration, independent infrastructure—while these already exist on the mainnet. Protocols wanting to cover users across the entire ecosystem need to deploy on five chains, connecting five sets of tools. Users move between them via cross-chain bridges, taking time and spending money each time, and occasionally losing everything.

Moreover, each L2 is not extending Ethereum, but pulling value away, forming new walled gardens. We are facing a reenactment of those problems that the industry aimed to solve.

This is not the way scalability for Ethereum should look.

What We Are Building

The Ethereum Economic Zone is a framework between L1 and L2, built around one principle: Rollups should extend Ethereum, not fork away from it.

EEZ rollup will achieve synchronous composability with the Ethereum mainnet. Smart contracts deployed on the EEZ rollup can call smart contracts on the mainnet or on another EEZ rollup, receiving responses and utilizing them within a single transaction. The result is atomic cross-chain execution, ensuring anchoring on top of Ethereum. Shared liquidity, a unified security model.

What does this mean in practice:

For Ethereum, the EEZ rollup aims to strengthen the role of the base layer. ETH remains the gas token, settlement layer, and source of truth. Activities on the rollup will not pull value away from Ethereum, but build on it and draw from its security.

For protocols, complexity is greatly reduced. There is no need to deploy and maintain multiple versions across multiple chains; the protocol can be deployed once, relying on synchronous composability to cover all users in the EEZ. No management of cross-chain bridges, asset wrapping, or integration across chains is necessary.

For users, the experience is closer to their intuitive expectations: a single Ethereum. Assets, positions, and identities are available across environments without explicit cross-chain steps. In most cases, gas can be paid in ETH, regardless of where it is executed.

We are building this framework according to Ethereum’s core values: open source, security, trustless, censorship-resistant, streamlined, community-driven.

Why Us

A reasonable question, answered briefly.

Gnosis has been building Ethereum infrastructure since the first week of smart contract deployments, quite literally the first week. Our first transaction on Ethereum took place in August 2015. Since then, our engineers have built the constant product AMM model (which became the foundation for most DeFi), the conditional token framework (now used by Polymarket), the CoW protocol (which pioneered batch auctions and intent trading), and Safe (the first production-grade smart contract wallet, hosting over $58 billion). We have operated Gnosis Chain without interruption for seven years. We know how to deliver infrastructure that does not break.

We are also highly aligned with Ethereum itself. Gnosis DAO holds a substantial amount of ETH, which means the success of Ethereum as a system is not an abstract concept to us; it directly relates to what we are building.

On the technical side, much of the work is led by Jordi Baylina, the creator of Circom, who has been at the forefront of zero-knowledge proof systems for years. His work on zkEVM is one of the most thoroughly validated ZK infrastructures in production, and he is also the founder of Zisk—a high-performance proof stack that will be utilized in EEZ.

The Ethereum Foundation is funding this work. EEZ is designed as a trusted neutral shared Ethereum infrastructure, not owned by Gnosis or any single entity.

We are building it because it needs to exist, and because we have a track record of delivering it.

This Is Not What It Is

EEZ is not the product of any single team. Gnosis and Zisk are founding contributors, but the goal is to build a shared Ethereum infrastructure. The EEZ association based in Switzerland is a newly established entity dedicated to developing it as a fully open-source public infrastructure. All work will be released as free open-source software, with contributions welcomed. This is not a closed group but an open effort to build infrastructure on which the entire Ethereum ecosystem can rely.

It is not an L2 framework but a framework between L1 and L2. This distinction is important. Rather than expanding an isolated execution environment and connecting it asynchronously, it is a fundamentally different architecture—“composability” here really means composability: smart contracts can call each other atomically across execution environments.

It is also not just an idea. It can be traced back to early Ethereum research, including execution sharding. What’s new is that recent advances in real-time proof technology make it feasible. Jordi and our team have been working behind the scenes for months. We are announcing now because the technological foundation is solid enough to share. Specifications and benchmarking will be released subsequently.

Next Steps

We are building an alliance composed of infrastructure teams, protocols, block builders, and ecosystem contributors who recognize Ethereum as the most important economic zone in the world and are committed to unifying the ecosystem. Other founding members include Aave, Titan, Beaver Build, Centrifuge, xStocks, and we welcome more core contributors from across the ecosystem to join.

This is not intended to be a closed group. If you are a protocol team, infrastructure builder, or just believe that Ethereum should operate as one system rather than a hundred systems, we want to hear your voice.

In the coming weeks, we will release: technical architecture and protocol specifications, performance benchmarks, developer tools and ecosystem integration details, as well as a clear path for existing Ethereum protocols to access EEZ.

Ethereum can only realize its maximum value as a unified, composable economy.

Not as a collection of enclaves connected by cross-chain bridges, not fifty versions of the same DEX on fifty chains with fifty liquidity pools.

One Ethereum. EEZ.

Friederike Ernst is a co-founder of Gnosis. Jordi Baylina is the founder of Zisk. The Ethereum Economic Zone is developed with funding from the Ethereum Foundation.