USDLayerZero Unveils “Zero” Blockchain With Citadel and ARK Investments, Targets 2 Million TPS and $0.000001 Fees
DTCC, ICE, and Google Cloud Join LayerZero Rollout as Tether Cites USDt0 Moving More Than $70 Billion Cross-Chain
TL;DR
- LayerZero launched “Zero,” a new blockchain backed by strategic ZRO token investments from Citadel Securities and ARK Invest, plus an advisory board led by Cathie Wood with ICE and former BNY Mellon digital assets leadership.
- Zero uses a heterogeneous design with ZK proofs separating execution from verification, with claims of 2 million transactions per second, near-zero fees, and connectivity to 165+ blockchains.
- Tether Investments backed LayerZero as USDt0 expanded via OFT rails, with Tether also pointing to broader investments including Adecoagro and a $150 million stake in Gold.com.
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LayerZero Labs on Feb. 10, 2026 unveiled Zero, a new blockchain positioned for institutional-grade financial markets, alongside a strategic investment by Citadel Securities in ZRO, the network’s native token and governance asset. ARK Invest also invested in LayerZero’s equity and ZRO token, the company said, adding that Cathie Wood joined a newly formed advisory board alongside ICE executive Michael Blaugrund and former BNY Mellon digital assets head Caroline Butler, with the size of the investments not disclosed.
Citadel Securities said it is working with LayerZero to evaluate how Zero’s architecture could support high-throughput workflows across trading and post-trade processes, while LayerZero described the rollout as part of a broader push to support blockchain-based trading, clearing and settlement. The company also said Tether Investments, the investment arm of the stablecoin issuer, made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs earlier Tuesday, as it highlighted growing use of LayerZero’s interoperability rails for stablecoin mobility.
Zero is designed around LayerZero’s heterogeneous architecture using zero-knowledge proofs to separate transaction execution from verification, with the company claiming the design can scale to roughly 2 million transactions per second across multiple zones, with transaction costs approaching $0.000001 and effectively unlimited blockspace. “Zero’s architecture moves the industry’s roadmap forward by at least a decade,” said Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs, in the release. “We believe we can actually bring the entire global economy onchain with this technology.
The blockchain is set to debut in Fall 2026 with three initial zones: a general-purpose Ethereum Virtual Machine environment, a privacy-focused payments system, and a purpose-built trading venue. LayerZero said ZRO will anchor network governance and security, while its interoperability stack links Zero to more than 165 blockchains, describing the system as delivering step-change improvements across compute, storage, networking and cryptography so different zones can be optimized for specific use cases rather than forcing all nodes to perform identical work.
DTCC said it will explore using Zero to enhance the scalability of its tokenization and collateral initiatives, while Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is examining applications tied to 24/7 trading and tokenized collateral. Google Cloud is partnering with LayerZero to explore blockchain-based micropayments and resource trading for AI agents, with Google Cloud’s Head of Web3 Strategy Richard Widmann saying, “As AI agents start to become economic actors, the programmability of cryptocurrencies and blockchains will require infrastructure as reliable as the cloud itself,” and adding, “LayerZero is rethinking how blockchains work from the ground up. By pairing their expertise with our infrastructure, we are exploring how to expand the definition of the internet to include value.”
Tether Investments described its LayerZero bet as support for cross-chain infrastructure underpinning USDt0, a blockchain-agnostic version of its dollar-pegged token that has moved over $70 billion across blockchains in less than a year, according to the press release cited in the context. Tether said the investment followed USDt0’s deployment by Everdawn Labs and is built using LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token standard, alongside the tokenized gold project XAUt0, while noting its broader investment activity includes a majority stake in Adecoagro (AGRO) and a stake in Rumble (RUM), and that it bought a $150 million stake in Gold.com earlier this month to boost tokenized gold distribution.
LayerZero said the Zero launch comes as Citadel’s direct ZRO purchase stands out for a firm that has invested in crypto companies including Ripple and Kraken, and as ARK’s Cathie Wood said, “This is a historic opportunity at the intersection of finance and the internet.” DTCC’s President and CEO Frank La Salla said, “DTCC has been driving acceptance and adoption of digital assets, but realizing the full potential of blockchain technology has been elusive due to limitations in speed and scale,” while Citadel added it is collaborating with LayerZero to provide market structure expertise for workflows requiring high performance and reliability.
Data points around the rollout landed as crypto market participants tracked a fast-moving crypto price index and day-to-day crypto price swings across venues, while the coin market cap narrative increasingly centers on infrastructure rather than short-term tokens. LayerZero said Zero’s design aims for “~100,000x faster performance and greater throughput than Ethereum and ~500x more than Solana,” and described its mission as “to build permissionless infrastructure for a better world.”
This article has been refined and enhanced by ChatGPT.
