Announcements 21X AG and LayerZero Deliver Institutional-Grade Onchain Trading Pilot on Private-Permissioned Deployment of Zero 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
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21X AG and LayerZero completed a pilot that ran 21X’s onchain central limit order book on a private instance of Zero. The test used U.S. equity tokens and reached 10,000 order matches per second, with matching and settlement handled in one transaction.
Key claims & sources
What it means
21X AG sits at the intersection of regulated market infrastructure and blockchain-based trading, and this pilot shows how those two layers are being tested together. Zero is being used here as a private-permissioned environment rather than a public venue, which matters for institutions that need tighter control over who can participate. The reference to 21X as Europe’s first fully regulated DLT trading and settlement venue places this work inside an existing regulatory framework instead of a purely experimental one.
For firms building trading systems, the practical point is that order matching and settlement were tested together in one transaction, rather than as separate steps. That changes how a venue thinks about latency, operational complexity, and the mechanics of moving tokenized assets through a book. The use of U.S. equity tokens also shows that the test was not limited to a synthetic demo asset.
This pilot sits in the ongoing trade-off between market structure designed for speed and control, and blockchain systems built around open participation. A private-permissioned deployment can make onchain trading more workable for regulated venues, but it also narrows the openness that public chains are known for. The tension is not just technical; it is about whether institutional trading can adopt blockchain rails without changing the permissions model that defines them.
Still open is how this setup performs outside a pilot and what the live operating rules will look like for participants using Zero at scale. The reports do not say when, or whether, the same performance and transaction design will be extended beyond this test. They also do not set out the broader rollout plan for U.S. equity tokens on 21X’s venue.
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