LayerZero Labs has announced the launch of “Zero,” a new heterogeneous blockchain designed to eliminate scalability bottlenecks for global financial markets.
Developed in collaboration with industry giants Citadel Securities, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), and Intercontinental Exchange, the network aims to provide institutional-grade infrastructure for trading, clearing, and settlement. Citadel Securities has further solidified its commitment to the project by making a strategic investment in the ZRO token.
We’re building Zero with the world’s foremost experts on markets, tokenization, and beyond.
Day Zero Partners
– @citsecurities, the next-generation global market maker
– @The_DTCC, the world’s largest clearinghouse
– @ICE_Markets, the global leader in market infrastructure pic.twitter.com/R4EiHuMiEG— LayerZero (@LayerZero_Core) February 10, 2026
Technical breakthroughs target institutional scale
The Zero blockchain introduces a heterogeneous architecture that decouples transaction execution from verification using zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). By leveraging “Jolt,” an open-source zkVM developed by a16z crypto, the network eliminates the traditional replication requirement where every node must perform the same work. This shift allows Zero to scale to a reported 2 million transactions per second (TPS) across unlimited zones, with transaction costs projected as low as $0.000001.
To guide its expansion into traditional finance, LayerZero has formed a new advisory board. Members include ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood, Michael Blaugrund of Intercontinental Exchange, and Caroline Butler, the former head of digital assets at BNY Mellon.
Strategic investment signals market maturity
Citadel Securities’ involvement marks a significant bridge between traditional market making and on-chain liquidity. The firm will contribute expertise to evaluate how Zero’s high-performance architecture can be applied to real-world settlement workflows. This partnership follows a broader trend in 2026, in which traditional financial institutions have increased individual investment in institutional-level infrastructure.
This development builds on LayerZero’s existing footprint in the interoperability space. The protocol previously powered the launch of USDt0, a stablecoin implementation by Tether that facilitated over $70 billion in cross-chain value transfers in less than a year.
By transitioning from a messaging protocol to a foundational blockchain layer, LayerZero aims to solve the fragmentation and liquidity issues that have historically hindered decentralized finance. LayerZero’s institutional adoption and Tether’s $150 million investment in Gold.com collectively confirm Web3’s accelerating shift into robust, traditional financial infrastructure.
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