1inch (@1inch): Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ): from fragmented L2s to a unified ecosystem

Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ): from fragmented L2s to a unified ecosystem Ethereum has dozens of Layer 2 networks. Each delivered faster transactions and lower fees. Together, they created something else: fragmented liquidity, constant bridging, duplicated infrastructure, and a user experience that feels like navigating between disconnected islands. A new initiative wants to change that. What is the Ethereum Economic Zone? Announced at @EthCC in Cannes, the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) is a framework designed to make Ethereum's L2 ecosystem work together as one system. It is being developed by a coalition that includes Gnosis, Zisk and the Ethereum Foundation. The goal: treat Ethereum L1 and its L2s not as separate environments, but as a single cohesive economic zone - while preserving Ethereum's core security model. The problem it addresses Ethereum's scaling strategy worked technically. Dozens of L2s now handle high throughput at low cost. But the structural cost has been friction: Users bridge assets between networks. Liquidity is split across chains. Developers rebuild the same infrastructure repeatedly. Even simple actions often require multiple steps across multiple environments. As Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst put it: "Ethereum doesn't have a scaling problem. It has a fragmentation problem. Every new L2 is a silo that makes it harder to seamlessly extend and drive value back to the Ethereum mainnet." What EEZ proposes The EEZ is designed to remove these silos. At a high level, it aims to enable instant cross-network interactions without traditional bridges, shared liquidity between L2s and L1, unified infrastructure for developers, and a significantly smoother user experience - all using ETH as the primary fee token, with no new native tokens introduced. Why now The EEZ arrives as fragmentation has moved from technical concern to strategic priority. Vitalik Buterin has recently pointed to user experience and L2 coordination as areas requiring serious rethinking. The EEZ is a direct response: not more chains, but better coherence between existing ones. What it means for users If the EEZ delivers, users would interact with applications across different L2s as if they were on a single unified environment - without choosing networks, bridging assets manually, or dealing with split liquidity. What it means for developers Less infrastructure duplication. Simpler cross-chain development. Access to deeper, unified liquidity pools. Relevance for the 1inch ecosystem "Once the EEZ is realized, two huge opportunities open up for the 1inch ecosystem," says Tanner Moore, Head of Developer Relations at 1inch. "First, there is potential for our aggregator to play a bigger role in DeFi infrastructure - upgraded from single-transaction swaps within one chain to single-transaction swaps between many chains. Second, it would create a new opportunity for Aqua to achieve a similar end-state, cleanly unifying liquidity across Ethereum L1 and all EEZ L2s." "The EEZ initiative is aligning EVM chains similarly to how 1inch originally aligned DEXes," he added. "It is bringing back simple UX for on-chain actions, and I completely agree with the direction." From scaling to cohesion Ethereum has expanded capacity while preserving security. The next challenge is making that expanded ecosystem coherent. The EEZ represents an attempt to move from a collection of isolated chains toward a genuinely interconnected economic zone - where liquidity, applications and users move freely across the ecosystem. Its success will depend on coordination and adoption across multiple stakeholders. But the direction is clear: Ethereum's future may depend not only on how much it can scale, but on how well its parts work together. What do you think - is fragmentation the core challenge Ethereum needs to solve next, or do you see a different path forward?