Gnosis Chain plans to transform into an Ethereum economic zone ZK Rollup

Foresight News reports that, according to GnosisDAO GIP-153 governance proposal, Gnosis Chain is seeking community directional consensus on transforming from an independent Layer 1 to an Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) ZK Rollup. The proposal, jointly written by Friederike Ernst and others, is currently in its first phase. It explicitly states that Gnosis Chain’s positioning as an independent L1 has failed. The original “trusted neutrality” value proposition largely overlaps with Ethereum, but lacks its scale advantages and liquidity, and transaction fee income is far from sufficient to cover security costs. Security expenditure has long depended on DAO treasury subsidies, with an annual dilution to non-stakers of approximately 2.3%.

After the transformation, Gnosis Chain will generate blocks at a speed of 2 seconds per block, and each Ethereum block will perform state proofs and settle to Ethereum L1, achieving synchronous composability with the Ethereum mainnet. Users can cross-chain call Ethereum contracts in a single transaction—a capability not possessed by the more than 100 existing L2s. User addresses, balances, and contract states remain continuous, with xDAI continuing to serve as the Gas token.

Currently, around 350,000 GNO tokens are staked (about 27% of circulation) and will be unlocked, with large independent validator sets subsequently exiting. Sequencing rights will be centrally managed by Gnosis Ltd, while original cross-chain validators will transform into Prover nodes. GNO staking incentives will be replaced by fee capture from actual network activity; the specific token economic model will be proposed in subsequent GIPs.

According to the roadmap, GIP voting is expected to take place between August and September, with the genesis block scheduled for January 2027, at which time Gnosis Chain validators will officially exit. Full EEZ standards such as bidirectional synchronous composability are expected to be gradually implemented throughout 2027. This proposal does not involve additional funding requests and merely seeks directional consensus.