Morning Minute: Layer Zero Debuts Most Impressive Blockchain Tech Upgrade in Years

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors fall 2-3% ahead of jobs report; BTC at $67,300
• Layer Zero announces Zero chain with major backing and partnerships
• SBF requests new trial after firing attorney, claims new evidence
• Robinhood crypto revenue slows, prediction market growth 4x’s
• Polymarket announces attention marketes powered by Kaito AI

🖥️ LayerZero Drops a New Blockchain—and Wall Street Showed Up

The most important blockchain tech of the decade may have just arrived.

And the biggest players in finance are taking note.

📌 What Happened

Yesterday, LayerZero Labs unveiled Zero, a new L1 blockchain targeting 2 million transactions per second (TPS) per Zone.

For perspective, that TPS target is roughly 100,000x Ethereum and 500x Solana.

It launches fall 2026 with three initial zones: a general-purpose EVM environment, a privacy-focused payments system, and a purpose-built trading venue.

And it’s got some serious backing and partners lined up:

• Citadel Securities bought ZRO tokens directly and is collaborating on trading, clearing, and settlement workflows
• ARK Invest took equity + tokens and Cathie Wood joins the advisory board
• DTCC will explore Zero for its tokenization service and collateral management
• ICE (NYSE’s parent) is examining Zero for 24/7 trading and tokenized collateral
• Google Cloud partnered to explore AI agent micropayments on-chain
• Tether announced a separate strategic investment the same day, backing the LayerZero infrastructure powering USDt0 ($70B+ in cross-chain transfers in under a year)

But it’s the architecture that makes Zero different from the last dozen “institutional blockchain” projects.

Every blockchain today is homogeneous, which means every validator downloads, processes, and verifies every transaction. It’s like running a company where every employee does every job.

Zero uses ZK proofs to break that model. Block Producers handle the heavy lifting: executing transactions, building blocks, and generating proofs. Block Validators just verify the proofs, making it cheap enough to run on consumer hardware.

That split is what makes it heterogeneous, and it’s the foundation for running multiple “Atomicity Zones” in parallel, like concurrent processes on a multi-core CPU.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“Zero’s architecture moves the industry’s roadmap forward by at least a decade,” said LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino. “We believe we can actually bring the entire global economy onchain with this technology.”

“This is a historic opportunity at the intersection of finance and the internet,” said Cathie Wood.

Google Cloud’s Head of Web3 Strategy Richard Widmann: “As AI agents start to become economic actors, the programmability of cryptocurrencies and blockchains will require infrastructure as reliable as the cloud itself.”

🧠 Why It Matters

If Zero’s architecture works as described, it’s attacking a real problem in blockchains: redundant replication.

Ethereum forces every validator to do the same work, which is secure and decentralized… but very inefficient.

Solana improves throughput by raising hardware requirements, which works… but pushes the network toward fewer operators (less decentralized).

Zero is basically saying: stop choosing decentralization or security.

Make verification cheap enough that home validators can still exist at scale, and push execution into a producer class that competes to generate proofs. Then run multiple “cores” (Zones) in parallel so the chain isn’t a single global traffic jam.

Of course, this whole pitch lives or dies on implementation details:

• Can the proving stack actually keep up in real time under adversarial conditions?
• Do “optional” producers end up becoming the de facto gatekeepers anyway?
• Does governance + delegated stake stay decentralized in practice?

But the vision and direction make sense. And clearly some of the biggest players in the world recognize it.

Now let’s see if Bryan and team can pull it off…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors are red down 2-3% ahead of today’s jobs report; BTC -2% at $67.1K; ETH -2% at $1,960; SOL -3% at $81; XRP -2% at ~$1.37
• ZRO (+32%), RIVER (+14%) and ASTER (+4%) led top movers
• LayerZero announced its own L1 blockchain called Zero, backed by Citadel Securities and Ark Invest, with Google Cloud and DTCC partnerships
• Tether Investments made a strategic investment in LayerZero Labs, the protocol behind USDt0 just hours ahead of the Zero announcement
• Goldman Sachs disclosed holding $1.1B of BTC and $1B of ETH, making up 0.33% of its portfolio
• SBF filed a pro se motion for a new trial after firing his lawyer, potentially opening a path for him to get out of prison
• Ray Dalio warned CBDCs will eliminate financial privacy in an interview with Tucker Carlson, calling them inevitable but also “not that big of a deal” as a store of value
• Robinhood missed Q4 revenue expectations at $1.28B vs. $1.35B expected; crypto revenue fell 38% YoY to $221M as BTC dropped 23% in Q4 while prediction market volume spiked 4x
• SafeMoon CEO Braden Karony received a 100-month prison sentence for securities fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering; ordered to forfeit $7.5M
• Kraken moved CFO Stephanie Lemmerman to an advisory role ahead of the exchange’s planned IPO

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme majors were mostly red; DOGE -3%, SHIB -2%, PEPE -2%, TRUMP -4%, PENGU -3%, FARTCOIN -6%
• CopperInu (+50%) led notable Solana movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Monad announced Nitro as a 3-month accelerator program with $500k in funding for winning teams
• MoonPay announced a partnership with Deel to enable stablecoins for businesses and allow salaries paid in stables
• Ondo Finance launched perps for stocks in MetaMask
• Robinhood launched its public testnet for its Robinhood Chain built on Arbitrum
• USDAi announced an ICO on Coinlist for its CHIP token at $300M FDV
• Polymarket announced the launch of attention markets powered by Kaito AI

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mostly red; Punks even at 29.9 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.34 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.12 ETH; Hypurr’s +7% at 475 HYPE
• Bankr Club (+40%) led notable movers
• Pudgy Penguins teased a new credit card in partnership with Kast