Ethereum: Gnosis Chain Abandons Its Status as an Independent Blockchain to Become a Rollup

A massive vote, a radical status change. The GnosisDAO community approved just over a week ago the transition of Gnosis Chain, previously an autonomous layer 1 blockchain, to the status of a rollup within the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ). Proposal GIP-153 garnered 123,158 favorable GNO votes against only 115 against and 151 abstentions, out of a total of 123,425 GNO voted, well above the required quorum of 75,000 GNO.

• The GnosisDAO community has approved the transition of Gnosis Chain to a rollup within the Ethereum Economic Zone, marking a radical status change.

• Gnosis Chain will transform into a layer 2 using Ethereum's security, with a launch expected between 2026 and 2027, thus becoming the first network to adopt this experimental framework.

The change is far from cosmetic. Gnosis Chain will remove its own set of validators and settle its transactions directly on Ethereum, effectively becoming a layer 2 that relies on the security of the main network rather than its own. Existing applications, user balances, and the gas token xDAI would all be preserved in the transition.

The actual launch is expected at the end of 2026 or early 2027, provided that the EEZ technology is ready by that time. Gnosis Chain would thus become the very first network to deploy this framework in production, a symbolic step for a framework that is still largely experimental.

The Ethereum layer 2 ecosystem suffers from a well-identified issue: each rollup operates in its own bubble, and exchanges between them almost always go through bridges, historically the most attacked link in the entire crypto value chain. The EEZ framework, developed by Gnosis and ZisK with funding from the Ethereum Foundation, aims to unify this fragmented ecosystem by allowing smart contracts located on different rollups to execute synchronously, without relying on these bridges.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, himself pointed out centralized sequencers and trust bridge mechanisms as the weak points of the current layer 2 model. GnosisDAO has approved the transition of Gnosis Chain from an autonomous layer 1 infrastructure to integration into the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) certified ZK. Results of GIP-153: 123,158 votes for, 115 against, and 151 abstentions, out of 54 voters. Participation: 123,425 voters for a quorum of 75,000.

The financial stakes highlight the problem that the EEZ seeks to address. Data from L2Beat lists 22 Ethereum rollups securing a total of 27.82 billion dollars, a total that rises to 34.88 billion dollars when including validiums and other ancillary scalability networks. Each of these networks currently operates largely in isolation.

For users of Gnosis Pay and other applications already built on the network, the transition promises to remain invisible on a daily basis: same balances, same applications, same xDAI token for gas payments. What changes happens behind the scenes, in the way the network proves the validity of its transactions and settles its accounts with the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem.

The operation is not without trade-offs for Gnosis Chain. By abandoning its own set of validators, the network relinquishes a portion of its technical autonomy in favor of shared security with Ethereum, a compromise accepted by its supporters, but which requires increased trust in the common infrastructure of the EEZ. In exchange, the network hopes to gain composability with other EVM-compatible chains that might one day join this same framework, rather than remaining isolated in its corner.

The timeline gives Gnosis a comfortable margin for maneuver, between late 2026 and early 2027, to refine its technology before a launch in real conditions. Other Ethereum rollups, for now, observe the movement from the sidelines, each still confined to its own liquidity bubble.