Morning Minute: Layer Zero Debuts Most Impressive Blockchain Tech Upgrade in Years

Morning Minute is simply a regular newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The investigation and opinions expressed are his ain and bash not needfully bespeak those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s apical news:

• Crypto majors autumn 2-3% up of jobs report; BTC astatine $67,300

• Layer Zero announces Zero concatenation with large backing and partnerships

• SBF requests caller proceedings aft firing attorney, claims caller evidence

• Robinhood crypto gross slows, prediction marketplace maturation 4x’s

• Polymarket announces attraction marketes powered by Kaito AI

The astir important blockchain tech of the decennary whitethorn person conscionable arrived.

And the biggest players successful concern are taking note.

Yesterday, LayerZero Labs unveiled Zero, a caller L1 blockchain targeting 2 cardinal transactions per 2nd (TPS) per Zone.

For perspective, that TPS people is astir 100,000x Ethereum and 500x Solana.

It launches autumn 2026 with 3 archetypal zones: a general-purpose EVM environment, a privacy-focused payments system, and a purpose-built trading venue.

And it’s got immoderate superior backing and partners lined up:

• Citadel Securities bought ZRO tokens straight and is collaborating connected trading, clearing, and colony workflows

• ARK Invest took equity + tokens and Cathie Wood joins the advisory board

• DTCC volition research Zero for its tokenization work and collateral management

• ICE (NYSE’s parent) is examining Zero for 24/7 trading and tokenized collateral

• Google Cloud partnered to research AI cause micropayments on-chain

• Tether announced a abstracted strategical concern the aforesaid day, backing the LayerZero infrastructure powering USDt0 ($70B+ successful cross-chain transfers successful nether a year)

But it’s the architecture that makes Zero antithetic from the past twelve “institutional blockchain” projects.

Every blockchain contiguous is homogeneous, which means each validator downloads, processes, and verifies each transaction. It’s similar moving a institution wherever each worker does each job.

Zero uses ZK proofs to interruption that model. Block Producers grip the dense lifting: executing transactions, gathering blocks, and generating proofs. Block Validators conscionable verify the proofs, making it inexpensive capable to tally connected user hardware.

That divided is what makes it heterogeneous, and it’s the instauration for moving aggregate “Atomicity Zones” successful parallel, similar concurrent processes connected a multi-core CPU.

“Zero’s architecture moves the industry’s roadmap guardant by astatine slightest a decade,” said LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino. “We judge we tin really bring the full planetary system onchain with this technology.”