LayerZero launches Zero Chain this fall! Cathie Wood appointed as advisor, Citadel leads investment

LayerZero Labs, a blockchain company, plans to launch a Layer-1 blockchain called Zero, with backing from Citadel, targeting institutional finance. Zero is scheduled for release in fall 2026, with ARK CEO Cathie Wood joining the advisory board, alongside members including ICE Strategy Vice President and former BNY Mellon Digital Assets Head.

Strategic Investment Significance of Citadel and ARK

The project has received support from asset management firm ARK Invest, which will become a shareholder of LayerZero and ZRO tokens; additionally, market maker Citadel Securities has made a strategic investment in the token. The involvement of these two institutions is highly symbolic, representing the top forces in traditional finance and innovative investing.

Citadel Securities is one of the world’s largest market makers, playing a significant role in both US equities and crypto markets. The firm provides liquidity for approximately 27% of NYSE trading volume and is a core market maker for multiple crypto exchanges. Citadel’s strategic investment in Zero not only provides funding but could also mean future market-making services on the Zero chain, greatly enhancing liquidity and trading depth.

ARK Invest and its CEO Cathie Wood are known for betting on disruptive innovation. ARK has achieved huge gains on stocks like Tesla and Coinbase but also experienced severe drawdowns in 2021-2022. ARK’s investment in LayerZero indicates that Cathie Wood is optimistic about cross-chain interoperability and institutional-grade blockchains in the long term. More importantly, ARK is not only investing in equity and tokens but also Cathie Wood will join Zero’s newly formed advisory board.

Luxurious lineup of Zero Chain Advisory Board

Cathie Wood: CEO of ARK Invest, endorsed as the “female stock goddess”

Michael Blaugrund: ICE Strategy Vice President, representing NYSE parent company

Caroline Butler: Former Head of Digital Assets at BNY Mellon, with traditional finance background

This advisory composition demonstrates LayerZero’s ambition not only for technological breakthroughs but also to penetrate traditional finance. The participation of ICE and BNY Mellon executives opens doors for Zero chain adoption in conventional financial institutions. Their endorsement could persuade other conservative financial entities to consider adopting the Zero platform.

Tether’s investment arm also announced on Tuesday that it has made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs. As the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, Tether’s investments are typically cautious and precise. Tether’s choice to invest in LayerZero may imply that USDT could be issued or integrated on Zero chain in the future, bringing significant trading volume and user base to Zero.

Technical Breakthrough of 2 Million TPS and Challenges

LayerZero Labs claims that by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs and Jolt, Zero can scale to 2 million transactions per second. The company states that Zero uses zero-knowledge proofs and the zero-knowledge virtual machine Jolt to bypass the “fundamental replication requirement,” thereby expanding transaction processing capacity to 2 million TPS, whereas the “fundamental replication requirement” limits blockchain transaction throughput to under 10,000 TPS.

200 million TPS is an extremely ambitious figure. For comparison, Visa’s peak capacity is about 65,000 TPS, Ethereum handles roughly 15-30 TPS (Layer 2 solutions can reach thousands), and Solana’s theoretical peak is around 65,000 TPS (though actual performance is often in the thousands). Zero’s claimed 2 million TPS is 30 times Visa’s capacity. If truly achievable, this would be a revolutionary breakthrough in blockchain technology.

However, such extreme performance claims should be approached with caution. The “impossible triangle” of blockchain—decentralization, security, and scalability—suggests that improving one dimension often sacrifices another. To reach 2 million TPS, Zero might need to compromise on decentralization or security. Additionally, theoretical peak performance often differs significantly from sustainable real-world throughput. Solana, despite a theoretical 65,000 TPS, has experienced network outages and performance issues under load.

Zero claims to have achieved 100-fold performance improvements across storage (QMDB), computation (FAFO), networking (SVID), and zero-knowledge proofs (Jolt Pro). If these claims are true, it would be an engineering miracle. But until these are deployed and stress-tested in production, they should be regarded as aspirational visions rather than verified facts.

Institutional Adoption Blueprint: ICE, DTCC, Google

According to LayerZero Labs, several major institutions have shown interest in exploring potential applications of the technology. Google Cloud is collaborating with LayerZero Labs to explore how AI agents can perform small-value payments and transactions without bank accounts. This integration of AI and blockchain is one of the hottest areas of technological convergence today.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is considering building trading and clearing infrastructure on Zero to support 24/7 markets and tokenized collateral integration. ICE, the parent company of NYSE, contemplating adoption of Zero could mean traditional securities trading moving onto blockchain in the future. If successful, this “TradFi on-chain” shift would be a major milestone in financial history.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) aims to leverage Zero to enhance its tokenization services and collateral application chains’ scalability. As the core infrastructure for US securities settlement, handling trillions of dollars daily, DTCC’s interest indicates that traditional financial infrastructure is seriously evaluating blockchain alternatives.

Decentralized exchange Global Token Exchange announced on X forum that it plans to use Zero to build its decentralized system Turbo’s funding layer. As regulatory and infrastructure improvements continue, more financial institutions are entering crypto, with some predicting a new wave of adoption.

LayerZero Labs CEO Bryan Pellegrino stated that Zero’s “architecture advances the industry’s roadmap by at least ten years,” adding, “We believe this technology can truly bring the entire global economy on-chain.” While this grand narrative is inspiring, it also requires time and real-world application to validate.