Reintegrate with the Ethereum economic zone

Ask AI · How Martin Köppelmann’s L2 vision evolves within EEZ?

Author: gwilym

Article translation**: Block unicorn**

This year, at the EthCC conference in Cannes, the first major announcement was made: the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ).

The project is led by the Gnosis and ziskvm teams and funded by the Ethereum Foundation. The initiative aims to eliminate fragmentation within the Ethereum ecosystem. Let’s take a look at the current proposals.

Background

L2 layers aim to expand Ethereum’s block space and have achieved this goal. However, this expansion has brought about liquidity fragmentation. Tokens on platforms like Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, and others cannot directly interact with contracts on L1 or other L2 layers unless bridged, which takes time and money.

Of course, this is not a new discovery.

For example, at the 2024 Devcon SEA conference, Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann delivered a speech titled “Ethereum Needs Native L2 Layers,” focusing on trust assumptions that hinder L2 interoperability. To address this, he called for the development of zero-knowledge proof-based Rollups that can read and write in sync with Ethereum.

At the time, RYAN praised this concept as the vision of Ethereum 3.0. Now, the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) project is actively inheriting this vision and preparing to turn it into reality.

Although Köppelmann originally advocated for native Ethereum Rollups, the new EEZ concept stems from his 2024 discourse, aiming for broader, permissionless interoperability. EEZ Rollups can be native and Ethereum-based or external and non-Ethereum-based; this depends on their architectural choices.

Who is building EEZ?

Gnosis is a low-profile development giant that has created many iconic on-chain infrastructures, such as the CoW protocol, Safe multi-signature, Zodiac DAO architecture, the conditional token format supporting Polymarket predictions, Gnosis Chain, Gnosis Pay, and more.

In terms of ZK, Jordi Baylina’s team ZisK has innovatively developed an efficient open-source zkVM design capable of providing real-time proofs for executing smart contracts within the Ethereum ecosystem.

But importantly, neither Gnosis, ZisK, nor any other entity “owns” the EEZ stack; the Ethereum Foundation is funding this initiative “as a trusted, neutral shared Ethereum infrastructure,” with results to be open-sourced for free use by everyone.

How EEZ Works

In short, the Ethereum Economic Zone is a Layer 1-Layer 2 framework centered on synchronous composability (i.e., real-time interoperability).

In other words, a Rollup connected to EEZ can call contracts on L1 or other L2 layers and receive responses within a single transaction. This enables cross-chain atomic execution, making users feel as if they are using a single chain.

From this perspective, contracts on the EEZ chain will operate as if they are on the same chain. Transactions will be executed atomically across relevant networks or not at all if errors occur.

Based on Baylina’s previous research, we can infer that the anchor point will be proxy smart contracts—contracts on one chain representing operations on another chain. If you’re using Ethereum, you only need to call a proxy, which will handle the transaction and apply state changes to the designated L2 layer—done.

Perhaps most notably, this “single-chain user experience, multi-chain results” shift can be achieved without any protocol-layer changes to Ethereum, because EEZ relies on smart contracts and real-time zero-knowledge proofs.

However, a key trade-off for L2 layers joining the EEZ system is that they must also reorganize when Ethereum reorganizes, as Martin Köppelmann pointed out. This will be a technical challenge but not an insurmountable one. Rollups running their own sequencers will need to adapt to this integration, which is certainly feasible.

Importance

Imagine that Aave positions on Ethereum can interact with Uniswap pools on Unichain (or Morpho vaults on Base, or Fluid vaults on Arbitrum) in a single transaction without bridging.

This is the future EEZ aims to lead. While some progress in hardware and validation is still needed before this vision is fully realized, we are at a critical breakthrough moment.

The ultimate benefit should be further integration and dominance of Ethereum. As RSA said:

“If Ethereum succeeds—if it can unify all its blockchains into an integrated economic zone—while simultaneously launching streamlined Ethereum quantum upgrades and Layer 1 scaling…

Ethereum will gain unstoppable network effects.

It will finally fulfill its core promise.

Ethereum = the world ledger.

ETH = the world reserve asset.”

This is the grand vision. So, as we await the official launch of EEZ, be sure to follow the latest updates on the project and watch for new partners joining, because this alliance is just getting started.

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