We're Building the Ethereum Economic Zone. Here's Why.

We've been an L1 for seven years. 

So why are we helping build an Ethereum L2 Framework?

Because the L2 landscape has a problem and because it’s good for Gnosis to fix it.

Ethereum Scaling Worked. Everything Else Broke.

Rollups did what they promised. Transactions got cheaper. Throughput went up. The scaling debate is, mercifully, mostly over.

But somewhere along the way, "scaling Ethereum" turned into "building a hundred Ethereums." Each with its own liquidity. Its own bridges. Its own version of infrastructure that already exists on mainnet. Its own wallet integrations. Its own way of doing things that are, at their core, the same thing.

If you're a builder, you know what this looks like: deploy on one L2, then deploy on another, then another. Each time, integrate with new tooling, new bridges, new liquidity sources. It's the same product, just rebuilt five times.

If you're a user, you know what it feels like: bridges that cost time and money, assets scattered across chains you half-remember signing up for, and the vague sense that it shouldn't be this hard.

Ethereum didn't scale into one economy. It scaled into a hundred islands.

The Ethereum Economic Zone

The EEZ is a framework for rollups that actually compose with Ethereum, not just settle on it.

The technical term is "synchronous composability." In plain language: a smart contract on an EEZ rollup can call a smart contract on mainnet, or on any other EEZ rollup, within a single transaction, receive a response, and use it. Same execution guarantees as L1. No bridge. No wrapping. No waiting.

Three things that matter:

Unified Global liquidity. Protocols on the EEZ access Ethereum's existing liquidity directly. Not bridged liquidity. Not wrapped liquidity. The same liquidity. If Uniswap has a pool on mainnet, your EEZ protocol can access it, in the same transaction, with the same guarantees.

Ethereum security. EEZ rollups inherit the full security of the Ethereum validator set. No separate consensus mechanism. No new trust assumptions. No "trust us, we have a multisig."

Synchronous composability. A smart contract on an EEZ rollup can call a contract on mainnet or on any other EEZ rollup within a single transaction. Not "eventually consistent." Not "finalised in a few hours." Atomic. Real-time. With the same guarantees as deploying on L1.

For builders, this means: deploy once and your protocol composes with all of Ethereum. For users, this means: one Ethereum that works as one system.

Why Gnosis Is Involved

Gnosis has always been at the leading edge of Ethereum technology. Gnosis Ltd engineers were the first to develop constant product AMMs, which enabled contemporary DeFi. We developed batch auctions and intent based trading, culminating in CoW Protocol. We built the Conditional Token Framework, which is used by Polymarket and most other onchain prediction markets. And long before ‘Account Abstraction’ became a core Ethereum roadmap priority, we developed the first production-grade implementation of smart contract wallets with Safe.

The EEZ follows the same logic. This framework is vital Ethereum infrastructure. We're a founding contributor alongside Jordi Baylina, founder of ZisK and also creator of Circom and a core contributor to Polygon zkEVM. The Ethereum Foundation is co-funding the development.

We're involved because the problem is real, the architecture represents a breakthrough for Ethereum, and we have the track record to ship it. 

What This Means For Gnosis Chain

Nothing, yet. But building the framework brings opportunities for first mover advantage as well as a host of commercial opportunities beyond the decision for Gnosis Chain.

Gnosis Chain was created from a very specific thesis: that credibly neutral blockspace would be in demand. In practice, that has not played out the way we expected. Blockspace has largely been commoditized.

Running a standalone domain means constantly rebuilding and sustaining a full stack of DeFi primitives, bootstrapping liquidity, maintaining bridges, operating on-and off-ramps, solving compliance and monitoring requirements, and ensuring that core infrastructure stays competitive. It often feels like swimming against the current just to remain relevant.

Synchronous interoperability changes that dynamic. Every project that operates inside a truly shared, atomically composable Ethereum domain no longer needs to replicate the entire ecosystem just to participate in it. They can rely on shared liquidity, canonical infrastructure and common security guarantees instead of duplicating them. That frees up capital, engineering bandwidth, and strategic focus.

Instead of defending parity, we can invest more in differentiation: building better user experiences, real-world integrations, consumer-grade financial apps, and purpose-built products like Gnosis Pay and the Gnosis App.

While the reference implementation of the EEZ rollup will only use ETH as gas, it is already clear to us that there could be compelling opportunities for our existing validator set and for the GNO token in our own implementation, should we decide to go that route.

This will all be defined with the community over the coming months.

What This Means For The Mission

We started Gnosis to empower every human with financial agency and access. Every product we've built serves that mission. Today that looks like a chain for local stablecoins, card infrastructure that doesn't require custody, a consumer app that gives the margin back.

But none of it reaches its potential in a fragmented ecosystem. A stablecoin on one chain can't compose with a lending protocol on another without bridges and risk. A card infrastructure can't access the deepest liquidity pools without wrappers and workarounds. A consumer app can't offer the best rates if the best rates live in a different execution environment.

The EEZ solves this at the infrastructure level. One composable Ethereum means every protocol, every stablecoin, and every application can work together, without the duct tape.

Forking banks is easier when you're not also forking Ethereum into a hundred pieces.

What Comes Next

In the coming weeks and months, we'll publish:

• Technical architecture and protocol specifications

• Performance benchmarks

• Developer tooling and integration guides

• Details on how existing Ethereum protocols can build on the EEZ

We’ll also provide information to Gnosis DAO to enable the DAO to start to decide what this means for the Gnosis Chain.

How Can You Get Involved?

If you're building protocols, infrastructure, or applications and you think Ethereum should work as one system, we'd like to hear from you (here).

If you're part of our Gnosis community, please join the next quarterly AMA and bring your questions. We also strongly encourage you to follow the account on X for the latest project updates.

For more information about Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) you can visit the website and read through Friederike and Jordi’s blog.