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On March 29, 2026, developers from Gnosis and Zisk, with support from the Ethereum Foundation, introduced a proposal called the “Ethereum Economic Zone” (EEZ), a framework designed to unify Ethereum’s increasingly fragmented layer-2 (L2) ecosystem.
The proposal focuses on a structural shift: making multiple rollups behave like a single system instead of isolated networks, targeting what the developers describe as a core problem.
> The Ethereum Economic Zone is an L1<>L2 framework built around one principle: rollups that extend Ethereum, not branch away from it
— ⟠ (@ryanberckmans) March 29, 2026
Ethereum’s scaling roadmap has largely worked. L2BEAT data shows rollups processing about 1,270 user operations per second over the past day as of March 29, compared with roughly 21 on Ethereum mainnet, while average on-chain cost per L2 user operation sits at $0.000183 on OP Mainnet and $0.000297 on Base over the past year.
That progress has also introduced a new trade-off.
Each layer-2 now operates with its own liquidity, infrastructure, and user base. Moving assets between them still depends on bridges, which introduce cost, delay, and risk.
As the EEZ proposal frames it, Ethereum scaled throughput, but fragmented liquidity across rollups rather than extending a single unified network.
Data from L2BEAT shows more than 20 active L2 networks securing around $34.4 billion in total value as of March 2026, with activity spread across chains like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. The result isn’t one Ethereum economy. There are multiple parallel ones.
The EEZ framework targets this fragmentation at the execution level.
Instead of relying on asynchronous bridges, the framework proposes synchronous composability. This allows smart contracts on different rollups and Ethereum mainnet to interact within a single transaction.
In this model, a contract deployed on one rollup could call another contract on a different rollup, receive a response, and complete execution atomically.
This removes the need for:
The system also keeps ETH as the default gas token and anchors settlement back to Ethereum, reinforcing the base layer rather than competing with it.
The proposal comes as debate over Ethereum’s L2 design has intensified.
Vitalik Buterin has questioned whether the original vision of rollups as “extensions” of Ethereum still holds, pointing to slow interoperability progress and shifting layer-1 (L1) scaling dynamics.
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/2018711006394843585
The EEZ proposal directly responds to that gap.
Instead of treating rollups as separate scaling units, it reframes them as components of a unified system, where interoperability is built into execution rather than layered on top.
This also places EEZ alongside broader interoperability efforts across Ethereum, including Optimism’s Superchain and Polygon’s AggLayer. The difference is that EEZ is pitched around execution-level composability: smart contracts across connected rollups and Ethereum mainnet can interact atomically within a single transaction, while keeping ETH as the default gas token rather than introducing another coordination layer.
The proposal still leaves open questions around implementation and coordination across competing rollups.
From a market perspective, a unified execution layer could strengthen Ethereum by consolidating liquidity and reinforcing ETH as the primary gas and settlement asset.
At the same time, tighter integration may pressure standalone L2 tokens tied to isolated ecosystems.
The key question is whether efforts like EEZ can make Ethereum’s multi-rollup model more cohesive, or whether fragmentation continues to favor more integrated networks such as Solana.
The Ethereum Economic Zone proposal signals a shift in how scaling is being approached across the ecosystem. Rather than adding more rollups, developers are now focusing on coordinating existing infrastructure.
If implemented, the framework could reshape how users interact with Ethereum, making multiple rollups function as a unified execution environment instead of separate networks.
This would move Ethereum closer to a modular but interconnected architecture, where liquidity, applications, and users operate across rollups without friction.
Whether EEZ gains adoption remains uncertain, but the proposal highlights a broader evolution in Ethereum’s roadmap from expanding capacity to improving cohesion across its growing layer-2 landscape.
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