LayerZero connected blockchains together. Now they are building their own. Zero is a standalone L1 with three parallel zones. General-purpose EVM, privacy-enabled payments, and a dedicated trading venue. They share settlement but execute independently. The design target is 2M TPS per zone with horizontal scaling as more zones come online. The architecture separates execution from verification using ZK proofs. A smaller set of block producers handle transactions and generate proofs. Validators check those proofs and touch less than 0.5% of actual block data. Zero claims Jolt Pro can prove in real time with seconds-level finality. If it works it would unlock ZK for use cases that current systems are too slow to handle. Because it inherits LayerZero's messaging infrastructure Zero connects to 165 chains at launch. None of the TPS claims have been demonstrated on a live network yet but the pieces are there for something interesting.(Delphi Digital)