LayerZero

LayerZero announced ATLAS, a new trading and settlement engine designed to sit underneath exchanges rather than compete with them, causing its ZRO token to jump more than 20% on the news. ATLAS has no app or frontend; instead, trading venues plug into it, keeping their own interface and customers while skipping the need to build matching, clearing, settlement, and risk systems. LayerZero is shipping two versions: one for crypto apps and prediction markets, and one for firms that need to enforce their own rules on the same engine, with markets ranging from spot and perps to stocks, bonds, commodities, and predictions. ZRO is integrated into the system, with venues staking the token for fee rebates of 20% to 65%, and after those rebates, 75% of what's left buys and burns ZRO while 25% goes to the market creator. This announcement comes after a difficult period for LayerZero, which saw attackers take roughly $292 million from Kelp DAO's bridge in April and protocols leaving, including BitGo's $7.7 billion in wrapped Bitcoin and Wyoming's state stablecoin, totaling about $15 billion.