Linea becomes first major Layer 2 to place its core tech under neutral open source governance as new LF Decentralized Trust project - Lineth
ZUG, Switzerland and SAN FRANCISCO and MIAMI, May 5, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Linea Consortium and Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust (LF Decentralized Trust) announced that the Linea Consortium, a non-profit organization formed to guide Linea's ecosystem growth and decentralization, has become a premier member of LF Decentralized Trust, the premier open source foundation for decentralized technology. Linea Consortium is contributing the open source ZK rollup stack powering Linea to LF Decentralized Trust for vendor-neutral, open governance. The Linea stack is being renamed Lineth, becoming the newest LF Decentralized Trust code project. Lineth is the first major Layer 2 technology stack to be hosted under a neutral foundation, marking a landmark step in vendor-neutral governance for Ethereum scaling infrastructure.
As a premier member, Linea Consortium takes on a governance role within LF Decentralized Trust. Declan Fox, Board Director of the Linea Consortium, joins the Governing Board alongside leaders from Consensys, DTCC, Hedera, Kaleido, OpenAssets, and Shielded Technologies.
"One of Ethereum's core value propositions is credible neutrality. Linea has been crafted to be as close to 100% Ethereum compatible as possible. Joining LF Decentralized Trust as a premier member and contributing Lineth are deliberate steps in Linea's progressive decentralization, ensuring that the technology powering the Layer 2 ecosystem has a durable, neutral home that no single company controls," said Fox. "For the enterprises, financial institutions, and sovereign entities that require open source software guarantees before they can build with confidence, these steps remove a critical structural barrier. The technology continues to be built and maintained by the same team and, now, an expanded community working under LF Decentralized Trust's open development framework. Infrastructure this foundational should belong to everyone who builds on it–that's what makes it a public good, and that's what makes it last."
Linea's open source ZK rollup technology stack becomes Lineth, the newest LF Decentralized Trust project
The Linea stack is a complete, EVM-equivalent ZK rollup implementation that powers the Linea Mainnet. Until now, every major ZK rollup stack has been controlled by a single team or foundation. Under LF Decentralized Trust governance, Lineth is the first to offer a vendor-neutral alternative.
Lineth provides the LF Decentralized Trust ecosystem with a production-grade, vendor-neutral implementation of Layer 2 technology. Key components include an L2 Execution Layer (built on Besu, originally contributed by Consensys to Hyperledger and now an LF Decentralized Trust project), L2 Consensus Layer, Coordinator, Prover, and L1 & L2 Smart Contracts. As a project governed by LF Decentralized Trust, Lineth aims to:
Like Besu, Lineth was incubated at Consensys and has been developed and maintained by the Linea team. Members of the team comprise the majority of the 30 proposed Lineth maintainers and aim to continue to drive active development. Uniting Lineth and Besu under LF Decentralized Trust creates continuity, sustainability, and neutrality critical for EVM adoption and scale.
"Ethereum exemplifies the power of open source to advance new technologies and markets," said Daniela Barbosa, General Manager, Decentralized Technologies, Linux Foundation, and Executive Director, LF Decentralized Trust. "Today, the Linea Consortium is confirming that open governance and code neutrality are the next drivers for modernizing financial market infrastructure. Through both their commitment to our foundation and contribution of Lineth, the Linea Consortium is addressing the mandate for a trustworthy, neutral layer enterprises and institutions can build on for generations to come."
About Linea Consortium
The Linea Consortium is a non-profit organization composed of the most trusted Ethereum institutions, formed to guide Linea's ecosystem growth and decentralization. Representing the voice of Ethereum, the Consortium brings together key Ethereum stewards to guide the Linea Protocol and maintain its foundational commitment to Ethereum-first alignment. Through structured, role-based governance, the Linea Consortium sets protocol strategy, oversees token distribution, and upholds long-term decentralization objectives. To learn more, visit consortium.linea.build.
About Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust
LF Decentralized Trust is the neutral home for the open development of technologies that empower organizations to innovate with secure and resilient code. It is the Linux Foundation's flagship organization for a broad range of technologies and standards that deliver the transparency, reliability, security, and efficiency required for a digital-first economy. Supported by a diverse, global base of members and communities, LF Decentralized Trust champions open source best practices across a growing ecosystem of blockchain, ledger, identity, cryptographic, and related technologies. To learn more, visit: www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org.
About the Linux Foundation
The Linux Foundation is the world's leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds
Contacts:
Jennifer Guaring
Linea Consortium
[email protected]
Emily Fisher
LF Decentralized Trust
[email protected]
SOURCE LF Decentralized Trust; Linea Consortium
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