LayerZero will launch its Zero mainnet and ATLAS trading infrastructure on 30 November, with Open ATLAS expected to connect more than a dozen trading venues from the outset.
ATLAS will provide the backend for trading and settlement through third-party platforms rather than operating a consumer-facing application. LayerZero said additional venues could be added before the end of the year.
The system will initially be the first application running on Zero. Its launch follows LayerZero’s ATLAS unveiling in August, when the company described a backend combining order matching, clearing, settlement and risk management. The project had initially been given a launch window of later this year.
On 6 October, reports about existing ZRO buybacks still described the ATLAS timetable as “coming later this year”, distinguishing LayerZero’s published schedule from an analyst’s expectation that it would launch within weeks.
Trading infrastructure without a consumer app
LayerZero’s documentation calls ATLAS a “headless exchange”. Users will access it through independent trading venues, which will retain control of their customers, distribution and interfaces.
The model separates responsibilities between three groups. Trading venues provide market access, market creators determine which products are available, and market makers provide liquidity. The planned markets include spot assets, perpetual contracts, stocks, commodities, bonds and prediction markets.
Open ATLAS is designed for crypto-native applications and teams developing open financial products. Operators can connect their own interface, use existing markets or create new ones, and access the trading engine without building a complete exchange infrastructure.
Institutional ATLAS will use the same engine, while institutions set the rules governing their markets. The November rollout will begin with Open ATLAS. At the August launch, chief executive Bryan Pellegrino described the system as infrastructure for an expanding range of continuously traded assets.
ZRO fee model
LayerZero says ZRO will secure Zero, pay network gas fees and allow venues to qualify for higher ATLAS rebates through staking.
Open ATLAS will have one trading fee. Venues will receive rebates of between 20% and 65%, depending on their ZRO stake, trading volume or both. After the rebate, 25% of the remaining fees will go to market creators and 75% will be used to buy and burn ZRO.
For example, $100 in fees would leave $80 after a 20% rebate. Of that, $60 would fund ZRO purchases and $20 would go to the market creator. With a 65% rebate, $35 would remain, divided into $26.25 for ZRO purchases and $8.75 for the creator.
These are illustrations of the announced fee structure, not forecasts for ATLAS revenue or token purchases.
Separately, LayerZero has used Stargate revenue for ZRO buybacks. Its June token update said all Stargate revenue had funded purchases since April 2026.
Zero’s planned performance
LayerZero introduced Zero in a February technical paper as a blockchain separating transaction execution from verification through zero-knowledge proofs. Block producers carry out the computation, while validators verify the resulting proofs.
The network divides activity between concurrent environments called Zones. ATLAS will run in its own Zone, separating its workload from payments and general-purpose applications.
LayerZero’s technical paper sets out a long-term target of 2 million transactions per second per Zone. The ATLAS FAQ lists initial capacity of 200,000 transactions per second, with median latency below one millisecond, 1.418 milliseconds at the 95th percentile and 2.641 milliseconds at the 99th percentile in a public-deployment environment. These are company-reported measurements, not independently verified results from the November mainnet.
LayerZero also has a separate stablecoin partnership with Anchorage Digital, announced in September. Anchorage Digital Bank selected the company to connect its stablecoins across blockchain networks using LayerZero’s Omnichain Fungible Token standard.
Anchorage named Tether’s USAT as the first stablecoin issued through its platform to launch with that interoperability. It said the assets would be designed to move across Ethereum, other Ethereum-compatible networks and Solana, with its issuance platform serving institutions including Tether, Western Union, OSL Group and Falcon Finance.
