Author: The Ethereum Economic Zone
Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow
Deep Tide Introduction: L2 has solved Ethereum's scaling problem, but in doing so, it has created a new issue: each chain is an isolated island, with fragmented liquidity, and users have to pay a cost every time they cross chains.
EEZ is funded by the Ethereum Foundation and jointly initiated by Gnosis and Zisk. Its core promise is synchronous composability between L1 and L2—contracts can make atomic calls across chains, no longer relying on bridges for connection.
This is one of the most noteworthy technical proposals in the context of the heated discussion around Ethereum's roadmap.
Full Text Below:
Ethereum's L2 ecosystem has solved one problem while creating another.
The scaling problem has been largely solved. Rollups work, transaction costs have decreased, and throughput has increased. That part is progressing well.
What hasn't progressed well is: each L2 has become its own isolated island. Separate liquidity, separate cross-chain bridges, separate wallet integrations, separate infrastructure—all of which already exist on the mainnet. Protocols that want to reach the entire ecosystem's users need to deploy on five chains and integrate with five sets of tools. Users move between them via cross-chain bridges, spending time and money each time, and occasionally losing everything.
Moreover, each L2 isn't extending Ethereum; it's extracting value and creating new walled gardens. We are facing a recurrence of the very problems this industry was built to solve.
This is not what Ethereum scaling was supposed to look like.
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 rollups will achieve synchronous composability with the Ethereum mainnet. Smart contracts deployed on an EEZ rollup can call a smart contract on the mainnet, or a contract on another EEZ rollup, receive a response, and use it within a single transaction. The result is atomic cross-chain execution, anchored and secured on Ethereum. Shared liquidity, a unified security model.
What does this mean in practice:
For Ethereum, EEZ rollups aim to strengthen the role of the base layer. ETH remains the gas token, the settlement layer, and the source of truth. Activity on rollups doesn't extract value from Ethereum; it builds on top of it, drawing from its security.
For protocols, complexity is drastically reduced. Instead of deploying and maintaining multiple versions on multiple chains, a protocol can deploy once and rely on synchronous composability to reach all users across the EEZ. No need to manage cross-chain bridges, wrapped assets, or chain-specific integrations.
For users, the experience is closer to what one intuitively expects: one 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 execution happens.
We are building this framework according to Ethereum's core values: open source, secure, trust-minimized, censorship-resistant, minimalist, and community-driven.
Why Us
A fair question, we'll answer it briefly.
Gnosis has been building Ethereum infrastructure since the first week smart contracts went live, literally the first week. Our first transaction on Ethereum happened in August 2015. Since then, our engineers have built the constant product AMM model (the basis for much of DeFi), the conditional tokens framework (now used by Polymarket), the CoW Protocol (pioneering batch auctions and intent-based trading), and Safe (the first production-grade smart contract wallet, safeguarding over $58 billion). We have operated Gnosis Chain for seven years without interruption. We know how to deliver infrastructure that doesn't break.
We are also highly aligned with Ethereum itself. Gnosis DAO holds a significant amount of ETH, which means the success of Ethereum as a system is not an abstract concept for 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 among the most battle-tested ZK infrastructure in production, and he is also the founder of Zisk—a high-performance proving stack that will be used in the EEZ.
The Ethereum Foundation is funding this work. The EEZ is designed to be credibly 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.
What This Is Not
EEZ is not a product of any single team. Gnosis and Zisk are founding contributors, but the goal is to build shared Ethereum infrastructure. The EEZ Association, based in Switzerland, is a newly formed entity specifically tasked with developing it as fully open-source public infrastructure. All work will be released as free and open-source software, and contributions are welcome. This is not a closed group but an open effort to build infrastructure the entire Ethereum ecosystem can rely on.
It is not an L2 framework, but a framework *between* L1 and L2. This distinction is important. Instead of extending isolated execution environments and connecting them asynchronously, this is a fundamentally different architecture—"composability" here truly means composability: smart contracts can call each other atomically across execution environments.
It is also not just an idea. It traces back to early Ethereum research, including execution sharding. What's new is that recent advances in real-time proving technology have made it feasible. Jordi and our team have been working on this for months behind the scenes. We are announcing it now because the technical foundation is solid enough to share. Specifications and benchmarks will follow.
What's Next
We are building a coalition of infrastructure teams, protocols, block builders, and ecosystem contributors who recognize Ethereum as the world's most important economic zone 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 simply believe Ethereum should function as one system, not a hundred, we want to hear from you.
In the coming weeks, we will release: the technical architecture and protocol specifications, performance benchmarks, developer tools and ecosystem integration details, and a clear path for existing Ethereum protocols to integrate with the EEZ.
Ethereum delivers maximum value when it functions as a unified, composable economy.
Not a collection of fiefdoms connected by bridges, not fifty versions of the same DEX with fifty liquidity pools on fifty chains.
One Ethereum. EEZ.
Friederike Ernst is a co-founder of Gnosis. Jordi Baylina is the founder of Zisk. The Ethereum Economic Zone is funded for development by the Ethereum Foundation.
