Gnosis Chain will cease operating as an independent Layer 1 blockchain in spring 2027 through a hard fork, transitioning into an Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) settlement region on Ethereum. The move makes Gnosis Chain the first general-purpose EEZ region, with contracts, balances, addresses, chain ID, and xDAI as the gas token remaining unchanged—requiring no redeployment from developers. Based on current DeFi TVL, the transitioned Gnosis Chain would rank among the top 10 Ethereum L2s and become the first L2 capable of synchronized composability with mainnet. However, its ~200,000 independent validators will not be retained post-transition. Gnosis cited annual operating costs of $7–10 million for the DAO to run the chain as a standalone L1 as a key driver behind the decision. On the same day, EEZ development network Rollup X launched at Devcon in Mumbai, demonstrating CoW Swap accessing mainnet liquidity via Rollup X and Safe performing atomic ownership changes across L1 and L2. EEZ is a Swiss nonprofit co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation, proposed by Gnosis and ZisK in March this year.