LayerZero Unveils Zero Blockchain with Citadel and ICE

Seoul, South Korea - LayerZero, a blockchain messaging protocol developer, announced Wednesday a blockchain architecture named "Zero" designed for high-frequency financial transactions and institutional data processing.

The Vancouver-based company presented the architecture at a press conference in Seoul.

The company said Zero is intended to address computational and storage limitations in current blockchain networks through zero-knowledge proofs and distributed processing.

The company announced an advisory committee for the project, including Cathie Wood, founder and chief executive of ARK Invest, and Michael Blaugrund, vice president of strategic initiatives at Intercontinental Exchange, parent company of the New York Stock Exchange.

Strategic investors and launch partners include Citadel Securities, ICE, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, and Google Cloud.

Nexpace, Nexon's blockchain subsidiary, signed a memorandum of understanding to explore partnership opportunities.

The company said the architecture incorporates four technical components: FAFO for computation scheduling, designed to support approximately 1 million transactions per second; QMDB, a database for 3 million status updates per second; SVID network technology supporting 10 gigabytes per second of data transfer; and Jolt Pro, a graphics processing unit-based zero-knowledge proof system.

"Zero is an architecture designed to implement the transaction processing levels and stability required by global financial markets within a blockchain environment."
said Alex Lim, the company's head of Asia.

The company stated it plans to extend Zero's application to derivatives markets, tokenized securities, and real-world asset payments beyond cryptocurrency trading.

Founded in 2021, LayerZero connects over 165 blockchains and supports more than 700 decentralized applications.

The Zero architecture represents the company's development of infrastructure for traditional financial institutions.