Ethereum's L2 scaling strategy has created a new problem: dozens of networks that don't talk to each other. A trio of projects announced a solution at the EthCC conference in Cannes on Sunday.

The Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), developed by Gnosis, the Ethereum Foundation, and zero-knowledge proving firm Zisk, is a framework designed to make Ethereum's layer 2s interoperate natively — without the bridges that have historically been slow, expensive, and vulnerable to exploits.

The core idea is shared infrastructure. Under EEZ, applications and transactions on different Ethereum networks would be able to interact instantly, relying on Ethereum's base layer for security while ETH remains the fee token across the unified system. Shared liquidity pools would remove the need to manually bridge assets between chains.

"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," said Gnosis co-founder Friederike Ernst.

The announcement comes at a pointed moment. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has publicly flagged the L2-heavy roadmap's downsides in recent months, suggesting the ecosystem needs to rethink fragmentation and user experience. EEZ appears to be a direct response.

The project is being developed openly with community input. Gnosis brings years of Ethereum infrastructure work; Zisk contributes ZK proving technology that enables the fast cross-chain settlement the framework depends on.

No mainnet launch date has been announced. The EEZ is currently in early development with community feedback invited through Ethereum governance channels.