Gnosis Chain plans to end its independent Layer 1 operations in spring 2027 and join the Ethereum Economic Zone, shifting settlement to Ethereum while preserving the chain’s existing on-chain state.
A hard fork is expected to carry over Gnosis Chain’s contracts, balances, addresses, chain ID and xDAI gas token unchanged. Developers will not need to redeploy their contracts. The transition will retire the chain’s current set of about 200,000 independent validators.
Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst wrote, “You cannot have fast blocks, synchronous composability with Ethereum and decentralised sequencing at the same time.” She said Gnosis chose fast blocks and synchronous composability. Gnosis DAO currently spends $7 million to $10 million a year operating the chain as an independent Layer 1.
The Ethereum Economic Zone is designed to let contracts across Ethereum and rollups call across networks and use the result in the same transaction. The framework aims to address fragmentation across rollups and Ethereum mainnet, where users have moved to rollups while much liquidity remains on mainnet.
The transition follows earlier work on faster cross-network transfers, including Gnosis Chain’s Ethereum bridge confirmations in about 12 seconds.
Rollup X, an Ethereum Economic Zone development network, launched as a public testnet at Devcon in Mumbai on Nov. 4. Demonstrations included a CoW Swap transaction using Ethereum mainnet liquidity and an atomic Safe owner change between Layer 1 and Layer 2.
Another demonstration verified a Falcon post-quantum signature on Rollup X and used it in an Ethereum mainnet contract. The operation used about 495,000 gas on mainnet through Rollup X; performing the same operation entirely on mainnet would use about 5.5 million gas, a reduction of about 91%. Rollup X remains a test network, and its core protocol is undergoing an independent security audit.
Simon Yoon
Simon Yoon reports on blockchain technology for TokenPost. Send corrections or tips to [email protected].
