LayerZero has introduced ATLAS, a headless exchange backend, with trading fees supporting ZRO buybacks and burns.
The token climbed more than 16% to $1.26 within 24 hours. ATLAS will direct 75% of fees remaining after venue rebates toward buying and burning ZRO.
ATLAS Converts Trading Revenue Into ZRO Demand
ATLAS, short for Aggregated Trading, Liquidity, and Settlement, applies one all-in fee per trade, then rebates the venue generating the volume.
Under Open ATLAS, rebates range from 20% to 65%. The amount depends on a venue’s trading volume and the quantity of ZRO it stakes.
A quarter of the post-rebate fee goes to market creators, while the remaining three quarters fund ZRO purchases and burns. This structure connects exchange activity with recurring token demand and gives venues a reason to lock ZRO supply.
LayerZero said venues must stake up to 1% of the ZRO supply to receive the highest rebate.
Venues Access Shared Trading Infrastructure
ATLAS has no consumer application or proprietary front end. Brokers, exchanges, and financial institutions can integrate the system into products while retaining their users, branding, and interfaces.
The backend combines trade matching, clearing, settlement, and risk management. This removes the need for each venue to build those functions or obtain them from a competing exchange.
Participants are divided into three roles. Venues operate customer-facing applications, market creators determine which assets trade, and market makers supply liquidity.
Supported markets can include spot tokens, perpetuals, stocks, bonds, commodities, memes, and prediction markets. LayerZero is also developing offerings for public crypto markets, prediction platforms, and institutions using customized trading rules.
“We built ATLAS to be the neutral, performant backend to power them all,” LayerZero co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino said.
Zero Builds After Major Bridge Exploit
ZRO also secures Zero through delegated proof-of-stake, pays network gas fees, and supports governance voting. Staking remains the only route to ATLAS’s higher rebate levels.
LayerZero introduced the finance-focused zero-knowledge chain in February with Citadel Securities, DTCC, ARK Invest, and Intercontinental Exchange. ARK CEO Cathie Wood joined its advisory board, while ARK and Citadel purchased ZRO.
ATLAS is the first product built on Zero, according to strategy lead Jack Melnick, who previously worked at Berachain.
Several projects moved cross-chain operations to Chainlink after an April attack drained 116,500 rsETH, then worth about $292 million, from Kelp DAO’s LayerZero-enabled bridge. Chainalysis linked the exploit to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Kelp later migrated routing to Chainlink and strengthened verification.
LayerZero said its OFT standard has processed over $290 billion across more than 160 blockchains. ATLAS launches later this year. ZRO later traded at $1.23, up 12.7% daily and 58.3% weekly, with $206.1 million in volume.
