GnosisDAO has approved GIP-153, a governance mandate to transition Gnosis Chain from a standalone Layer 1 into a zero-knowledge-proven Ethereum rollup that settles directly to Ethereum every block. The Snapshot vote passed with 123,158 GNO in favor.
The planned Ethereum Economic Zone rollup would eventually retire Gnosis Chain’s independent validator set and inherit security from Ethereum validators. The shift would unlock roughly 350,000 staked GNO, equivalent to about 27% of the token’s circulating supply. While those tokens are already counted in circulating supply, ending staking would make them liquid and remove their role in securing Gnosis Chain.
Around the governance decision, GNO rallied about 10% to as high as $136, its highest level since May, according to CryptoSlate data, despite the prospect of a sizable increase in liquid GNO.
Gas would remain paid in xDAI, and the target genesis window is late 2026 or early 2027. The approval is a direction-level mandate rather than a completed technical design, with no funding or final architecture approved yet.
Gnosis currently pays validator rewards from its treasury because network fees cover only a fraction of security costs; GIP-153 estimates this dilutes non-stakers by about 2.3% annually. After the validator set is retired, Gnosis intends to link GNO to rollup revenue, potentially through fee sharing or buybacks tied to network revenue, though the exact mechanism remains unresolved.
Martin Koeppelmann, Gnosis co-founder and CEO, said Ethereum is scaling into “a hundred islands,” and this proposal represents Gnosis choosing another path. He added that after the transition, anyone with a mainnet wallet would be able to use a Gnosis dapp in a single transaction, and a Gnosis account would be able to use anything on Ethereum—same block, no bridges.
Several DeFi projects, including Aave, Spark, Fluid, CoW Swap, Safe, and Centrifuge, have committed to building consumer-focused products in the environment. The transition also comes with a decentralization trade-off: Gnosis Ltd. is expected to initially operate the sequencer that orders transactions and produces blocks, while proofs and settlement move to Ethereum.
