Gnosis Chain is seeking directional community consensus on a plan to move from a standalone Layer 1 to an Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) ZK Rollup, according to GnosisDAO governance proposal GIP-153. The proposal was co-authored by Friederike Ernst and others and is now in its first phase. It states plainly that Gnosis Chain’s positioning as an independent L1 has failed.
The proposal says the standalone L1 model no longer works
In the proposal’s framing, Gnosis Chain’s original value proposition of “credible neutrality” overlaps heavily with Ethereum, but without Ethereum’s scale advantage or liquidity. It also says fee revenue falls well short of covering security costs, leaving security spending dependent on long-running DAO treasury subsidies. That structure results in about 2.3% annual dilution for non-stakers.
How the chain would operate after the shift
If the transition goes ahead, Gnosis Chain would produce blocks every two seconds. It would generate a state proof and settle to Ethereum L1 on every Ethereum block, with the goal of achieving synchronous composability with Ethereum mainnet.
The proposal says users would be able to call Ethereum contracts across chains within a single transaction, a capability it says none of the existing 100-plus L2s currently offer. User addresses, balances, and contract state would remain continuous, while xDAI would continue to serve as the gas token.
Validator set changes and token incentive overhaul
About 350,000 GNO currently staked, equal to roughly 27% of circulating supply, would be unlocked under the plan. The existing large independent validator set would exit. Sequencing would be run centrally by Gnosis Ltd, and current bridge validators would shift into prover node roles.
The proposal also says GNO staking incentives would be replaced by fee capture tied to actual network activity. A more detailed token economic model would be introduced in a later GIP.
Timeline in the roadmap
Under the roadmap laid out in the proposal, a GIP vote is expected between August and September. The target for the genesis block is January 2027, when Gnosis Chain validators would formally exit. Full EEZ specifications, including bidirectional synchronous composability, are expected to roll out over the course of 2027.
The proposal does not include any request for additional funding. For now, it is seeking only directional consensus.