I’ve been following the evolution of our governance with great interest, and I must say — the progress so far is impressive. The resilience of our infrastructure, combined with the community’s dedication to building robust processes, proposals, and initiatives, has set a strong foundation for our ecosystem. As one of the Directors of the ZKsync Foundation, I’m excited about these achievements and eager to push the boundaries further.
This is why we have started working on numerous ecosystem proposals. Based on extensive discussions with partners, service providers, ZK Chains, Matter Labs, and others, the Foundation has identified key areas of opportunity for ecosystem growth.
Key areas of opportunity we will focus on are: security, core development, shared infrastructure and ZK Chain and ZKsync adoption.
In the next few days we will circulate an initial roadmap of proposals covering these opportunities.
Experimenting with Governance Mechanisms
I am a strong believer in trust-minimized systems, especially in the context of governance. We must strive to reduce discretionary human decision-making — for instance, supervisory committees should function like an “off-chain smart contract,” executing instructions from a proposal’s token mechanics that cannot be fully enforced on-chain, without making discretionary funding decisions.
For this reason, while continuing to focus on token mechanics and automation, the Foundation will also begin actively experimenting with incorporating more mechanism design into proposals, aiming for higher alignment of incentives and a greater reliance on market-based tools — such as prizes, futarchy and conditional funding markets.
Focusing on Program Efficiency
Efficiency is critical. Hence the Foundation is committed to identifying and implementing the minimum sustainable overhead for governance programs. Instead of starting with a high overhead and moving down, we will instead start from the smallest possible cost - targeting a maximum overhead of 0-3% for all proposals to start - iterating from there to find the optimal sustainable overhead while ensuring costs remain under control. We will use this as a forcing function to directly reduce costs while indirectly fostering innovation and preventing bloating by channeling resources toward efficiency.
Fragmentation
One area I’d also like to explore with the community is the infrastructure fragmentation that has plagued other ecosystems — a problem that often leads to technical debt, operational complexity, opaqueness, and vendor lock-in.
The Foundation will endeavor to actively seek opportunities to minimize this fragmentation. By doing so, we aim to promote coordinated services for ZKsync that are modular and open-source, ensuring clarity and consistency across our ecosystem.
In line with this effort, the Foundation will strive to have the technical infrastructure built in a modular and generalized way (rather than creating bespoke solutions for each proposal), to build a shared data and claiming infrastructure which can be leveraged by all proposals and to organise the marketing of all programs in a coherent manner. It will also orchestrate a shared supervisory committee to oversee multiple proposals: this committee will handle off-chain checks and ensure that proposals adhere to predefined rules — without exercising discretionary power over funding allocations.
Such a coordinated approach will reduce costs and streamline our governance system.
An Invitation to Collaborate
In the coming weeks, we will share early drafts of these proposals. If you are a service provider, please come chat so that we can work with you on the roadmap and build momentum.
By challenging conventional assumptions and embracing a coordinated, efficient approach, we can build a governance system that is scalable, transparent, and beneficial for the entire ecosystem. I look forward to your thoughts and to working together to shape a brighter future for ZKsync.