By cryptoadmin LayerZero, the blockchain infrastructure firm that has been working with financial heavyweights like DTCC, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) and Citadel Securities, is moving deeper into trading infrastructure to serve as the backend for exchanges and other platforms offering crypto and tokenized assets.
ATLAS, short for Aggregated Trading Liquidity and Settlement, combines trade matching, clearing, settlement and risk management in one system built on Zero, LayerZero's blockchain announced earlier this year.
Markets could range from spot crypto and perpetual futures to stocks, bonds, commodities and prediction markets, LayerZero said in a Tuesday press release.
Trading around $1 earlier in the session, LayerZero's $ZRO $ZRO$1.0684 token surged more than 30% on the plans.
The launch comes as stablecoins and tokenization put more financial assets onchain, raising the question of where those assets will trade. LayerZero argues that existing market infrastructure, with separate systems for matching, clearing and settlement, isn't built for assets that can move around the clock.
“The world's global asset base is expanding faster than ever before,” Bryan Pellegrino, co-founder and CEO of LayerZero said in a statement. “It is globally accessible, continuously available, and includes an increasingly large number of assets with sufficient depth and liquidity to build meaningful markets around.
“We built ATLAS to be the neutral, performant backend to power them all," he added.
The move broadens LayerZero's ambitions beyond moving assets between chains and into the markets where those assets can trade. In February, the firm announced its Zero blockchain with partners including DTCC, ICE and Google Cloud and a strategic investment from Citadel Securities.
ATLAS won't have its own trading app like most exchanges. Instead, trading venues can plug into the infrastructure while keeping their own interface and customers.
The system will have two configurations: Open ATLAS targets crypto trading apps and prediction markets, while Institutional ATLAS lets exchanges and financial firms set their own market rules while using the same underlying engine, according to the team’s X post.
The infrastructure also gives native token $ZRO a more direct link to trading activity. Venues can stake the token for higher fee rebates, while 75% of fees left after venue rebates and payments to market creators will be used to buy and burn $ZRO, reducing its supply.