Citadel Securities backs LayerZero as it unveils ‘Zero’ blockchain for global markets
Citadel Securities and ARK Invest backed LayerZero's new 'Zero' blockchain designed for institutional financial markets.Summary
LayerZero Labs unveiled 'Zero,' a new high-performance blockchain targeting institutional-grade financial markets, coinciding with strategic investments from Citadel Securities and ARK Invest into the network's native token, ZRO. ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood joins a new advisory board, alongside executives from ICE and former BNY Mellon. The move signals a significant push by traditional market infrastructure players into blockchain for trading, clearing, and settlement, addressing prior scalability constraints. Zero utilizes a heterogeneous architecture with zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to separate execution from verification, claiming scalability up to 2 million transactions per second with minimal costs. Major institutions like DTCC and ICE are exploring using Zero for tokenization and 24/7 trading applications, while Google Cloud is partnering on micropayments. The blockchain will launch with three initial zones: an EVM environment, a privacy-focused payments system, and a trading venue, with ZRO anchoring governance and security.
(Source：CoinDesk)