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It’s not every day that a blockchain startup claims it can do what the world’s largest financial institutions have been chasing for years: make blockchains fast, cheap, and private enough for Wall Street’s heaviest hitters. But that’s exactly what LayerZero Labs, a Vancouver-based company founded in 2021, is promising with its new blockchain, Zero—a development that could signal a dramatic shift in how global finance operates.
On February 11, 2026, Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder and CEO of LayerZero Labs, took center stage to discuss the persistent challenges facing blockchain technology and how his company’s latest innovations might finally crack the code. According to Unchained and Fortune, Pellegrino’s message was clear: blockchain’s future hinges on overcoming the dual barriers of storage layer constraints and node computation inefficiencies, both of which have stymied the industry’s growth for years.
“The storage layer is a primary constraint for blockchain scalability,” Pellegrino explained. He wasn’t exaggerating—most blockchains, whether Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Solana, have struggled to scale up because every node in the network must replicate, store, and verify every transaction. That redundancy, while great for security, is a killer for efficiency and cost. “It’s like the storage layer is one of the primary things constraining almost every chain,” he added.
LayerZero’s answer? A new storage layer capable of a staggering 3,000,000 updates per second, a feat that signals a leap forward in scalability. But that’s not all. Their new blockchain, aptly named Zero, is designed to tackle the other elephant in the room: the inefficiency of node computation. “The core problem with any blockchain today is node computation inefficiency,” Pellegrino said. “You’re paying effectively a million times the cost of doing the computation itself.” The solution, he argues, is to reduce computation replication so that blockchains can process more transactions at a fraction of the cost.
Zero isn’t just a technical upgrade—it’s a strategic pivot. While LayerZero initially built its reputation as a cross-chain interoperability protocol (helping decentralized apps send tokens and messages between blockchains), Zero puts the company in direct competition with the likes of Ethereum and Solana. And it’s doing so with some heavyweight backers: Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, Citadel Securities, ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood, Intercontinental Exchange (parent company of the New York Stock Exchange), and stablecoin giant Tether are all on board as investors or partners. Citadel alone handles around 35% of U.S. retail stock trades, making its involvement a major vote of confidence.
So, what’s under the hood? Zero’s secret weapon is its use of zero-knowledge proofs—a cryptographic technique that lets different parties verify information without revealing the underlying data. This means Wall Street firms can rest easy knowing their sensitive client data won’t appear on a public ledger. According to Fortune, LayerZero’s new blockchain can handle up to 2,000,000 transactions per second at a fraction of a cent per transaction. For comparison, Solana’s previous record was 100,000 transactions per second. “This is in a completely different league,” Cathie Wood told Fortune. “Really bringing internet speed to finance—that’s a big idea.”
LayerZero’s ambitions extend beyond just technical prowess. Pellegrino and his team believe that the future of finance is global, decentralized, and always on. “Markets are gonna move from seven five to twenty four seven,” he said. “How do you actually build those markets for the future?” The goal is to enable permissionless, 24/7 trading across asset classes—a vision that would break down the current barriers of time zones and regulatory silos.
But not everyone is convinced. While many traditional finance (TradFi) players have announced pilots and experiments with blockchain-based tokenization, critics argue that much of it is still more marketing than substance. Even the New York Stock Exchange, which is exploring blockchain integration, can’t yet manage its systems on blockchain due to cost and speed constraints. Pellegrino acknowledges this, noting, “It’s not what exists today.” But he’s betting that Zero’s promised performance—backed by a team that includes two of the world’s leading zero-knowledge proof engineers—will change that equation.
LayerZero’s journey to this moment has been meteoric. The company raised $120 million in 2023 from investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia, hitting a $3 billion valuation in just 18 months. Its proprietary token, ZRO, now boasts a market capitalization of over $500 million. And with 82-85% market share in its interoperability niche, billions have already been built atop LayerZero’s infrastructure.
The technical breakthroughs aren’t limited to speed. LayerZero has also pushed the envelope on database performance, transitioning from Merkle Patricia Trees (MPT) to log-based databases—a switch that Pellegrino claims delivers “a 100x more performance than the state of the art for database structure.” The Aptos system, for instance, achieves a million transactions per second on a single node, underscoring just how far blockchain technology has come.
Efficiency is further boosted by the use of proofs validated by all nodes. “All nodes only need to validate the proof, making it effectively free,” Pellegrino said. This reduces the need for each node to independently replicate every computation, slashing operational costs and paving the way for true scalability.
Yet, as the technology matures, Pellegrino warns of a growing threat: centralization. “The last couple of years have pushed on a more centralized road map,” he observed, arguing that the drive to accommodate institutional investors has led to “a bunch of really bad compromises.” The risk, in his view, is that blockchains become just another centralized infrastructure, losing their original promise of decentralization and permissionless access. “We don’t think either of those is the way you want to scale a system long term.”
LayerZero’s answer is to double down on its principles. Zero is designed to be 100% immutable—unlike most blockchains, which allow for upgradable contracts. “We built it a 100% immutable,” Pellegrino insisted. This, he believes, is essential for security and trust. The company’s recently published Zero OS, developed with Dan Boneh, supports smart contract execution and global markets at scale, further cementing LayerZero’s commitment to decentralization and real-world utility.
Looking ahead, LayerZero plans to demonstrate its new blockchain on February 11, 2026, with a full launch scheduled for September. If Zero delivers on its promises, it could finally bridge the gap between the ideals of crypto and the demands of global finance. As Pellegrino put it, “Our goal with Layer Zero is to bring that forward in the space.”
For now, the world is watching. If LayerZero’s vision pans out, the next chapter in blockchain’s story might just be written not by crypto diehards, but by the very institutions it once sought to disrupt.
