Citadel, DTCC, ICE Join LayerZero to Advance Tokenized Securities on New Heterogeneous Blockchain ZRO

Citadel Securities, along with DTCC and Intercontinental Exchange, has invested in LayerZero’s heterogeneous blockchain, Zero, aiming to scale high-performance trading, clearing, and settlement for tokenized assets. The initiative targets the blockchain trilemma by enabling transactions across multiple chains without requiring uniform processing, supporting potentially up to 2 million transactions per second at a lower cost than Ethereum. LayerZero claims Zero can handle about 100,000x the throughput of Ethereum and 500x that of Solana, with a planned fall 2026 launch in three permissionless environments: smart contracts, payments, and trading across asset classes. The ZRO governance token will coordinate the network and interoperate with over 165 other chains. The companies are evaluating whether Zero can support tokenized securities, collateral, and 24/7 market infrastructure. Zero is described as permissionless to validate, build, and transact on, contrasting with existing walled-garden ledgers from companies like Google, Circle, and Stripe.