LayerZero gathers Wall Street's old money in one day as the cross-chain leader begins to tell the story of the "Wall Street public chain"

Article by: Deep Tide TechFlow

On February 10th, LayerZero launched Zero in New York.

This is a self-developed Layer 1 blockchain, aimed at supporting institutional-grade trading and clearing in financial markets.

LayerZero calls it a “decentralized multi-core world computer.” Let me translate that for you: a chain specifically designed for Wall Street.

At the same time, various Wall Street institutions are beginning to openly endorse it, with some responding by directly investing money.

Among them, Citadel Securities made a strategic investment in the ZRO token.

This company handles about one-third of retail stock orders in the U.S. CoinDesk specifically pointed out in its coverage that directly purchasing crypto tokens is not a common practice for traditional Wall Street firms like Citadel.

ARK Invest also bought equity and tokens of LayerZero, with Cathie Wood directly joining the project’s advisory board; Tether announced a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs on the same day, though the amount was not disclosed.

Beyond buying tokens and equity, there’s a quieter signal.

DTCC (the central clearinghouse for U.S. securities trading), ICE (the parent company of NYSE), and Google Cloud have also signed joint exploration agreements with LayerZero.

So, a cross-chain bridge project is transforming into something that has received collective endorsement across the entire industry chain—clearing, exchanges, market makers, asset management, stablecoins, and cloud computing.

Traditional institutions are adding another layer to their on-chain financial infrastructure.

After the announcement, ZRO’s price surged over 20% on the same day, currently around $2.30.

No longer just a bridge, now aiming to be a pipeline?

What LayerZero has been doing over the past three years isn’t complicated:

Moving tokens from one chain to another. Its cross-chain protocol currently connects over 165 blockchains. The cross-chain transfer of USDt0 (Tether’s cross-chain version) has handled over $70 billion in transfers in less than a year.

This is a mature business, but the ceiling is visible to the naked eye.

Cross-chain bridges are essentially tools—users choose whoever is cheaper and faster. But as the entire crypto market shrinks and trading volume declines, cross-chain is becoming a pseudo-demand. It’s understandable that LayerZero is shifting to a different track.

And it has the capital to do so. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Sequoia have led investments, with total funding exceeding $300 million, and a valuation once reaching $3 billion.

These two investors’ portfolios are basically Wall Street’s contact list. Citadel and DTCC’s willingness to sit at the table and support LayerZero likely has a lot to do with who’s backing it behind the scenes.

Returning to the new Layer 1, Zero, it doesn’t seem designed for DeFi players or meme traders.

Zero’s architecture is different from existing public chains. Most chains run all applications on a single path; Zero splits the chain into multiple independent partitions, called Zones by LayerZero.

Each Zone can be optimized for different scenarios without interference.

At launch, three Zones were opened: a general environment compatible with Ethereum smart contracts, a privacy payment system, and a dedicated trading matching environment.

These three Zones target three types of clients.

The general EVM environment retains existing crypto developers with low migration costs. The privacy payment system addresses an old institutional problem: on Ethereum, counterparties can see your positions and strategies, so large funds prefer not to trade naked.

The trading-specific Zone is more direct, aimed at solving matching and settlement after tokenization of securities.

Looking at the list of participants, it’s understandable. DTCC clears securities worth trillions of dollars annually; it wants to see if clearing can be faster. ICE operates the NYSE, which only opens on weekdays; it wants to try 24/7 trading. Citadel handles massive order flows; every step faster in post-trade processes means more money.

So, taken together, these aren’t crypto industry demands—they’re Wall Street’s own pain points.

LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino said quite plainly in an interview:

“It’s not that existing solutions aren’t good enough; it’s that scenarios requiring 2 million transactions per second belong to the future global economy.”

By the way, Zero claims to reach 2 million TPS in testing environments, enough to meet traditional financial production-level needs. But the performance narrative of public chains has long been played out; no matter how high the performance, it’s not particularly surprising.

The story can stay the same, but the audience can change. This time, it’s the old money.

Wall Street wants to bring trading on-chain, but Ethereum can’t handle it.

The reason institutions are rushing into LayerZero isn’t a crypto bull market—it’s Wall Street’s push for tokenization.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund issued on Ethereum last year, raising over $500 million. JPMorgan’s Onyx platform runs on Ethereum tech and has processed trillions of dollars in repurchase agreements.

Wall Street has used Ethereum for proof of concept, demonstrating tokenization’s feasibility. The next step is to find a place capable of handling real-world loads.

Zero’s three Zones are targeting this gap. EVM compatibility means assets and contracts on Ethereum can migrate over.

This may be the real divide between LayerZero and Ethereum.

Ethereum is now competing over standards like ERC-8004, issuing on-chain IDs for AI agents, and setting rules for future on-chain economies…

LayerZero’s current approach is to build pipelines regardless of standards, telling institutions: your transactions can run here.

One is writing the rulebook, the other is laying pipes. They’re betting on different things.

Ethereum bets on its irreplaceable trust layer, backed by TVL, a secure audit ecosystem, and institutional recognition. LayerZero bets on the need for execution layer alternatives: Wall Street needs speed, privacy, and throughput—who delivers first wins.

Whether these paths will eventually intersect is uncertain. But the flow of capital already signals a direction.

What does $ZRO mean?

ZRO’s original positioning was simple: governance token for LayerZero’s cross-chain protocol. Total supply of 1 billion, used for voting and staking, nothing more.

After Zero’s launch, the story of this token changed.

ZRO is the native token of Zero, anchored to network governance and security. If Zero truly becomes an institutional-grade financial infrastructure, ZRO’s valuation logic will no longer be “how much cross-chain trading volume,” but “how much assets are running on this chain.”

Both valuation anchors are obvious; the difference is several orders of magnitude. But story aside, a few key variables will determine ZRO’s future trajectory.

Supply side: 80% of tokens are still locked.

Currently, about 200 million ZRO are in circulation, just over 20% of the total supply. According to CoinGecko, approximately 25.7 million ZRO will unlock on February 20, worth about $50 million, representing 2.6% of total supply, allocated to core contributors and strategic partners. The entire unlock cycle extends until 2027.

This February 20 unlock is the first supply shock after the launch event. Whether the market can absorb it is a short-term test of sentiment.

Demand side: fee mechanisms are not yet active.

Currently, ZRO has no direct value capture mechanism. In December last year, a governance vote proposed charging fees for each cross-chain message, with proceeds used to buy back and burn ZRO, but it failed due to low turnout. The next vote is scheduled for June.

If passed, ZRO would have a burn mechanism similar to ETH, reducing circulating supply with each transaction. If it fails again, the token’s “governance rights” would be just voting power, without cash flow support.

In summary, players interested in ZRO should watch three key dates:

1. June—second vote on fee activation. Passing or not will directly determine whether ZRO has intrinsic demand.

2. This fall—Zero mainnet launch.

3. Until 2027—full unlocking of ZRO tokens. Before then, each unlock is a pressure point, and combined with the current crypto bear market, positive news may not significantly boost ZRO’s price.

Finally, LayerZero calls Zero a “decentralized multi-core world computer,” clearly referencing Ethereum’s concept of a world computer, aiming to play a more important role in settlement layers, especially in financial settlement, while transitioning and distancing from the thin narrative of cross-chain bridges.

However, official statements from several partners are worth noting.

Citadel describes its involvement as “assessing how architecture can support high-throughput workflows”; DTCC talks about “exploring scalability in tokenization and collateral.”

In other words, they think it might be useful, but no final decision has been made.

Wall Street’s money is smart—so smart that they place many small bets simultaneously, waiting to see which one pays off first. Therefore, when a project attracts backing from various top institutions, it’s not necessarily a sign of full commitment but more like a short-term catalyst for positive sentiment.

LayerZero’s involvement might be just an entry ticket or merely an interview opportunity.