21X AG and LayerZero deliver institutional-grade onchain trading pilot

Joint pilot ran 21X AG's live central limit order book on a private-permissioned instance of Zero, delivering up to a 45x improvement in performance with no offchain matching.
Vancouver, BC and Frankfurt, Germany - November 4, 2026 - LayerZero, a leading interoperability protocol behind more than $300 billion in cross-chain volume, today released the results of a joint technical pilot with 21X AG, the first venue licensed under the EU's DLT Pilot Regime to operate both trading and settlement from a single source.

* LayerZero and 21X AG, Europe's first fully regulated DLT trading and settlement venue, completed a joint pilot running a fully onchain central limit order book on a private instance of Zero

* The pilot recorded 10,000 order matches per second with headroom to go further, more than an order of magnitude above the standard institutional-grade EVM baseline

* A private-permissioned deployment of Zero's infrastructure is designed to give institutions control over network participation and data visibility, while staying compatible with the broader multi-chain ecosystem

* Zero is EVM-compatible end to end, so institutions can run existing tooling rather than rewriting for a specialized chain

The month-long pilot, which focused on US equity tokens, ran 21X AG's fully onchain central limit order book on a private-permissioned instance of Zero and benchmarked the results against other common public and private EVM networks. The pilot recorded 10,000 matches per second, a 45x improvement compared to the L2 EVM baseline.

"Capital markets are already moving onchain, and throughput across the industry is rising fast. What institutions need next is infrastructure that can carry real order flow at full scale without compromise," said Bryan Pellegrino, Co-Founder and CEO of LayerZero. "We built Zero for exactly that, with a novel architecture designed for the scale and performance institutions require. We're excited to partner with 21X AG to develop one of the world's fastest EVM for high-performance, institutional use cases."

A CLOB pilot on a private-permissioned instance of Zero

A central limit order book is the mechanism that matches buyers and sellers at a trading venue. Running one entirely onchain often hits limitations due to the underlying infrastructure, which typically encounters constraints impacting the number of matches per second to support institutional order flow. Venues that refer to themselves as onchain typically match orders on private servers and post results to a chain afterward.

21X AG's CLOB was built to run onchain with no offchain matching and is live in production in Europe, demonstrating the viability of the approach for trading and settlement of regulated financial instruments, with appropriate regulatory approval. The joint pilot with LayerZero indicates that the same approach can reach materially higher throughput on EVM.

"Our pilot demonstrates that the Zero blockchain architecture enables a regulated venue to run institutional order flow, end to end, entirely onchain," stated Max Heinzle, Founder and CEO of 21X Group. "We're excited to continue exploring how the performance can be improved even further with more tuning."

Built on a private-permissioned instance of Zero

Zero is the blockchain LayerZero announced in February in collaboration with Citadel Securities, the DTCC, ARK Invest, and the Intercontinental Exchange. The 21X AG pilot was deployed on a private-permissioned instance of Zero, which gives institutions control over network participation and data visibility, while preserving compatibility with the broader EVM and multi-chain ecosystem. 21X AG continues to operate its live multi-chain infrastructure alongside it.

Performance by the numbers

The pilot set out to quantify Zero's throughput against common EVM networks used in capital markets and to establish a baseline for further optimization. Over a month of continuous testing on a private-permissioned instance of Zero, it recorded 10,000 order matches per second with headroom to go further, up to a 45x improvement over the EVM deployments used as a baseline, with matching and settlement completed in the same transaction.

About LayerZero

LayerZero is the interoperability protocol that allows assets and applications to move across blockchains. LayerZero powers the OFT Standard and has facilitated more than $300 billion in cross-chain volume across 165 blockchains. LayerZero is also the creator of Zero - the high-performance blockchain announced in February 2026 in collaboration with Citadel Securities, DTCC, ARK Invest and the Intercontinental Exchange - and LayerZero ATLAS, a headless exchange built for the future of global markets.

Learn more at https://layerzero.network/.

About 21X Group

21X Group is an international financial market infrastructure group building regulated, tokenized capital markets, comprising 21X AG and 21X Service GmbH in Europe; and 21X LLC and 21X USA LLC in the United States.

In September 2025, 21X AG opened the first authorized distributed ledger technology trading and settlement system (DLT TSS) in the EU, positioning the company as a leader in the transition from traditional to tokenized asset-based capital markets. 21X AG operates its trading and settlement venue in the EU under BaFin (Bundesanstalt fur Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht) and ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) oversight. In September 2026, 21X Group announced its expansion into the US with the opening of a New York office and the operations of its US subsidiary, 21X LLC.

21X Group's infrastructure is designed to operate across multiple distributed ledger networks, adapted to the regulatory requirements of the markets in which it operates. 21X AG's platform in the EU enables atomic trading without counterparty risk through smart contract-based issuance, trading and settlement of tokenized stocks, bonds and funds.

See the video about 21X Group and our blockchain-based exchange here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAVOQ6o4UY].

Important information

21X LLC is not a registered broker-dealer under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and under applicable state laws in the United States or a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. Accordingly, this press release and its contents do not constitute an offer or invitation to sell, purchase or subscribe for, any securities or any other banking, investment, insurance or other product or service to US Persons (as such term is defined in the federal securities laws of the United States). This communication was reviewed by FINRA.
Media Contact
Company Name: 21X AG
Contact Person: Richie MacTaggart
Email: Send Email [http://www.universalpressrelease.com/?pr=21x-ag-and-layerzero-deliver-institutionalgrade-onchain-trading-pilot]
Phone: +44 7828173419
City: Frankfurt am Main
State: Hesse
Country: Germany
Website: https://www.21x.eu

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