LayerZero’s Zero Blockchain Backed by Citadel, DTCC, ICE

The announcement from LayerZero Labs represents a direct institutional assault on the so-called blockchain trilemma—the longstanding challenge of achieving scalability without compromising security or decentralization. Major players like Citadel Securities, DTCC, and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) are not merely observing; they are actively backing Zero with strategic investments and exploratory partnerships. Their collective goal is explicit: to overcome the “institutional constraints” around scale, speed, and coordination that have prevented blockchain-based trading, clearing, and settlement from moving beyond experimental phases.

This institutional warming to on-chain infrastructure is part of a broader trend, exemplified by efforts like BlackRock’s $1.7 billion BUIDL tokenized money market fund. However, while BUIDL offers yield and liquidity on existing public blockchains, the backing of Zero targets a more foundational problem. As Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs, boldly stated, the ambition is to “bring the entire global economy on-chain.” The involvement of ARK Invest and Google Cloud as partners to advise on capital markets and AI-driven payments further underscores the project’s ambition to serve complex, institutional-grade use cases from the ground up.

At the core of Zero’s proposition is its designation as the first “heterogeneous blockchain.” Unlike traditional networks where every participant must process the same transactions, Zero’s architecture allows work to be split and shared. This design, LayerZero claims, enables the network to handle far more activity at a lower cost. The performance claims are staggering: up to 2 million transactions per second (TPS) across multiple environments, which the company states would be roughly 100,000 times faster than Ethereum (ETH) and about 500 times greater throughput than Solana (SOL).

These figures, however, remain theoretical and unverified. The source text notes that Decrypt was unable to verify the claims, and LayerZero did not provide test data or independent benchmarks. Instead, the company offered “video material with leadership” in lieu of written responses. This lack of empirical validation presents a significant caveat to the ambitious performance metrics, highlighting that Zero’s potential, while compelling to its backers, is still largely conceptual as it heads toward a planned fall 2026 launch.

The institutional backers have outlined specific areas of exploration that align with their core businesses. Citadel Securities is assessing whether Zero could support high-performance trading, clearing, and settlement and has made a strategic investment in the network’s native ZRO token. Similarly, DTCC and ICE are investigating the blockchain’s capacity to scale tokenized securities, collateral, and the underlying infrastructure needed for round-the-clock markets.

The ZRO token is positioned as the linchpin of this ecosystem, serving as the native governance token to coordinate the network. Per the statement, it will also be instrumental in connecting Zero with more than 165 other blockchains. This cross-chain functionality is critical for creating a unified liquidity and settlement layer. The network plans to launch with three initial permissionless environments focused on smart contracts, payments, and multi-asset trading. Notably, Zero maintains it is “permissionless to validate, build, and transact on,” setting it apart from the permissioned ledgers and payment systems being developed by companies like Google, Circle, and Stripe for faster settlement.