Major financial institutions like Citadel Securities, DTCC, and Intercontinental Exchange are supporting LayerZero’s development of a new blockchain platform, Zero, aimed at overcoming constraints in trading, clearing, settlement, and tokenized assets. Zero seeks to address the blockchain trilemma—achieving scale, security, and decentralization—by introducing a heterogeneous network where participants do not need to process the same transactions. This design is intended to allow high throughput, with claims (so far unverified) of up to 2 million transactions per second, dramatically surpassing current platforms like Ethereum and Solana. Citadel is evaluating Zero for potential high-performance trading and has invested in the ZRO governance token; DTCC and Intercontinental Exchange are assessing its applicability for tokenized securities and 24/7 market infrastructure. Partners such as ARK Invest and Google Cloud are advising on capital markets and AI-driven payments. Zero will launch in fall 2026 with three permissionless environments focused on smart contracts, payments, and multi-asset trading and will use ZRO to connect with over 165 other blockchains. Unlike some industry initiatives, Zero emphasizes being fully permissionless for validation, building, and transactions.