GnosisDAO votes to include Gnosis Chain in the Ethereum Economic Zone

GnosisDAO approves major upgrade: Gnosis Chain will transform into a "special economic zone" within the Ethereum ecosystem

GnosisDAO has voted to approve a major upgrade to Gnosis Chain: the network will transform from a stand-alone first-tier (L1) blockchain to a zero-knowledge-proven "Ethereum Special Economic Zone"(EEZ) Rollup aligned with Ethereum. The decision aims to move Gnosis Chain's transaction settlement to Ethereum, while continuing to run smart contracts in an environment designed to improve the way users and applications interact with Ethereum's native assets and liquidity.

In this governance vote, Gnosis Chain reported that the GIP-153 proposal was passed with 123,158 GNO supports, 115 objections and 151 abstentions, with a total of 54 voters participating. The total number of votes for the proposal reached 123,425 GNOs, exceeding the quorum requirement of 75,000 GNOs. Gnosis Chain currently says that the initial launch target is set for late 2026 or early 2027, depending on the readiness of EEZ technology.

Core Points

GnosisDAO approved Proposal GIP-153, which plans to transform Gnosis Chain from a Layer 1 (L1) network to an EEZ Rollup for clearing transactions on Ethereum.

Despite the low number of negative votes, the vote exceeded the quorum threshold of 75,000 GNOs with 123,425 GNOs participating, demonstrating broad governance support.

Under the proposal, the verifier set of Gnosis Chain will be removed and settlement responsibilities will be transferred to the verifiers of Ethereum.

Gnosis Chain's native contracts will have closer access to Ethereum's assets and liquidity, including the ability to invoke Ethereum in the same transaction and use its results.

The EEZ concept aims to reduce fragmentation issues in Ethereum's growing Rollup ecosystem, potentially reducing reliance on cross-chain bridges.

What changes GIP-153 brings to Gnosis Chain

The approved GIP-153 proposal outlines a fundamental architectural shift. Gnosis Chain will no longer settle transactions on its own chain as a Layer 1 (L1), but will instead settle transactions on Ethereum, making it effectively an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) network that relies on the Ethereum Verifier Set for final settlement.

Under the same proposal framework, Gnosis Chain's existing validator set will be removed, aligning core clearing with Ethereum, while retaining the network's application layer. Gnosis Chain also said it will retain "existing apps, balances and xDAI fuel tokens," which means it will provide continuity to users and developers even as underlying consensus and settlement models change.

A key promise of the EEZ approach is to improve on-chain interoperability of smart contracts. The proposal states that Gnosis Chain's native smart contracts will be able to call Ethereum and use that information in the same transaction-a feature it claims is currently not possible for existing L2 systems.

Why implement the EEZ framework

At a more macro level, the EEZ concept aims to solve a structural problem in Ethereum's expansion: fragmentation. As the Ethereum Rollup ecosystem expands, mobility and usage are increasingly isolated between different networks. Different rollups can also limit the ease with which contracts in one environment can be synchronized and coordinated with contracts in another environment.

It is reported that the EEZ framework was jointly developed by Gnosis and ZisK and received funding from the Ethereum Foundation. The explicit goal is to unify Rollup aligned with Ethereum, so that smart contracts in different participating networks can be executed simultaneously without the need for a bridging mechanism.

This is important for investors and developers, as cross-chain bridges and cross-chain messaging have become recurring safety failure points in the broader ecosystem. The EEZ plan seeks to improve the way assets and logic interact between Rollup while reducing a major source of operational and security risk.

Timing is also a core uncertainty factor. The launch target set by Gnosis Chain (late 2026 or early 2027) clearly depends on the full development of the underlying EEZ technology. This means that market participants may need to start tracking technology milestones and readiness signals long before deployment.

Buterin's criticism versus Rollup's security trade-off

The background behind the EEZ-aligned design is the ongoing debate around how L2 fits into Ethereum's long-term architecture. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has previously stated that some of the assumptions behind the original L2 vision no longer hold true. "The original vision of L2 and its role in Ethereum no longer makes sense and we need a new path," he wrote in a February 3 Platform X post, pointing out potential weaknesses including centralized sorters and trusted bridging mechanisms.

These concerns coincide with EEZ's positioning: bringing settlement closer to Ethereum's security model, reducing reliance on cross-chain bridges, and providing a more direct execution path for cross-network smart contract interactions.

Rollup's adoption rate is still impressive. Data quoted from L2Beat shows that the 22 Ethereum Rollups it tracks have locked up US$27.82 billion; if Validium, Optimum and other extended networks are included, the total locked value tracked by the platform is US$34.88 billion. As this scale expands, industry pressure for smoother composability and reduced fragmentation may intensify.

Standard Chartered Bank: Fewer cross-chain bridges, stronger combinability

Standard Chartered Bank's digital asset research team also expressed its views on the changes EEZ may bring at the operational and economic levels. In a May 28 report, Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital asset research, said EEZ could reduce reliance on blockchain cross-chain bridges and improve the availability of assets in EVM environments.

"EEZ will bring the benefits of reducing the need for cross-chain bridges (which often come with the risk of hacking) and improving the availability of assets on the EVM chain," Kendrick wrote. He added that these factors "are likely to lead to more activity in the Ethereum ecosystem."

From an application perspective, Kendrick also highlighted the potential for enhanced composability. The core concept is that smart contracts in the participating network can interact within the same transaction, thereby achieving richer cross-asset and cross-contract workflows without fragmentation caused by operations spanning multiple independent Rollups.

Transformation is imminent, points of concern

As the approval of GnosisDAO settles, the key questions facing the market are the execution level: whether EEZ technology can advance as planned, and whether Gnosis Chain can maintain the continuity of user and developer tools during the migration process. As the end-2026/early-2027 target date approaches, attention is likely to turn to implementation details-especially how Ethereum settlement, synchronous execution and reduced reliance on cross-chain bridges will be implemented in practice.