Developers from Gnosis and Zisk, supported by the Ethereum Foundation, have proposed the “Ethereum Economic Zone” (EEZ), a framework designed to reduce fragmentation across Ethereum’s layer-2 (L2) ecosystem by enabling rollups to interoperate and interact with the mainnet within a single transaction.
The EEZ would allow smart contracts on different rollups to execute synchronously across networks without relying on bridges. By letting applications share infrastructure across rollups while settling back to Ethereum, the proposal aims to cut duplication, lower the need for cross-chain transfers and concentrate activity that is today split among many parallel execution environments.
The initiative is being developed with Ethereum researchers and industry participants. Early contributors include infrastructure providers and DeFi protocols exploring a shared standard for interoperable rollups. The group also plans an “EEZ Alliance” to coordinate standards and support adoption as the ecosystem evolves. Technical design details and performance benchmarks are expected in the coming weeks.
The proposal arrives amid debate about trade-offs in Ethereum’s rollup-centric scaling strategy. While L2s have increased throughput, they have also divided liquidity and user activity. Data from L2BEAT shows more than 20 active L2 networks securing nearly $40 billion in total value, with liquidity dispersed across chains such as Arbitrum, Base and Optimism.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has questioned aspects of some L2 designs, highlighting centralized sequencers and trusted bridging mechanisms as potential weaknesses and suggesting the rollup landscape may need a new direction. His comments prompted mixed reactions among L2 teams: some, like Optimism’s co-founder Karl Floersch, say L2s must evolve beyond pure scaling, while others, including Offchain Labs’ Steven Goldfeder, emphasize that scaling remains a primary function as rollups handle transaction volume beyond Ethereum’s base layer.
Gnosis, an early Ethereum infrastructure developer, and Zisk, a zero-knowledge proving project led by Jordi Baylina (creator of Polygon zkEVM), are driving the EEZ concept alongside other ecosystem stakeholders. The proposal seeks to balance interoperability and security while preserving settling to Ethereum as the canonical layer.
