GnosisDAO Proposal Seeks Consensus on Gnosis Chain Shift to Ethereum ZK Rollup

GnosisDAO GIP-153 is seeking community direction on converting Gnosis Chain from an independent Layer 1 into an Ethereum Economic Zone ZK Rollup. The proposal, co-authored by Friederike Ernst and others, is in its first stage and says Gnosis Chain has failed as an independent L1.

According to Foresight News, the proposal argues that Gnosis Chain's original claim of being a trusted neutral network overlaps heavily with Ethereum, while lacking its scale and liquidity. It says fee revenue is far below security costs, with security spending long dependent on DAO treasury subsidies and annual dilution of about 2.3% for non-stakers.

Under the proposed transition, Gnosis Chain would produce blocks every 2 seconds and generate one state proof per Ethereum block before settling to Ethereum L1, enabling synchronous composability with the Ethereum mainnet. Users would be able to call Ethereum contracts in a single transaction, while addresses, balances, and contract state would remain continuous. xDAI would continue to serve as the gas token.

The proposal says about 350,000 GNO currently staked, or around 27% of circulating supply, would be unlocked, and the large independent validator set would exit. Sequencing power would be operated centrally by Gnosis Ltd, while former cross-chain validators would become prover nodes. GNO staking incentives would be replaced by fee capture from actual network activity, with a detailed token model to be proposed later in another GIP.

The roadmap calls for a GIP vote between August and September, with the genesis block targeted for January 2027, when Gnosis Chain validators would formally exit. Full EEZ specifications, including synchronous composability, are expected to roll out during 2027. The proposal does not seek additional funding and only asks for directional consensus.