This post serves as the Season 1 review for Workstream 1 (existing community initiatives) and sets out decisions related to Season 2.
Season 1: 1 September 2025 - 28 February 2026
Season 2: 1 March 2026 - 31 August 2026
Key Decisions:
- ZK Latam is renewed for Season 2 at $9,000 USD/month (paid in ZK)
- ZKnomist is renewed for Season 2 at $10,000 USD/month (paid in ZK)
- Online Educators is not renewed for Season 2
The outcomes related to Season 2 were made in consultation with Matter Labs, who are day-to-day managers of all three initiatives. Gathering feedback from Matter Labs allowed for detailed feedback to be collected related to the impact of each work stream which was then used by the Foundation in conjunction with the reports published in the forum.
In the current market, the Foundation’s bias is to keep fixed renewals narrow (high-conviction, externally impactful workstreams) and run experiments through RFP experiments (Workstream 2) with explicit KPIs and tight stop/go controls.
What we evaluated in Season 1
Season 1 was assessed against the program’s stated purpose: drive measurable awareness, developer adoption, and education outcomes for ZKsync, with an emphasis on execution quality and cost-effectiveness. In practice, the Foundation weighted:
- clarity of outputs and observable ecosystem impact
- whether reported activity maps to outcomes (not just activity volume)
- cost relative to alternatives and opportunity cost of capital
- ability to run the workstream with clear accountability and course correction
Workstream 1 decisions
ZK Latam: renewed for Season 2
Season 1 supported a regionally anchored activation and ecosystem engagement function. The workstream demonstrated enough external-facing leverage to justify continuation into Season 2, with an expectation of tighter reporting on pipeline quality and outcomes.
Season 2 terms:
- Compensation: $9,000/month, paid in ZK. The basis of this amount is to align with the intended compensation at the time the proposal was passed while adjusting for the moving average of the token price.
- Reporting: Summary posted by the end of Month 3, Season 2, focused on partner pipeline progression and ecosystem activations (with clear definitions of what constitutes a qualified lead and meaningful funnel movement), plus a short retro on what did and did not convert.
ZKnomist: renewed for Season 2
Season 1 delivered a consistent communications layer covering ZKsync developments across product, governance, and ecosystem activity. This workstream is being continued in recognition of the impactful role ZKnomist has played with the marketing of ZKsync.
Season 2 terms:
- Compensation: $10,000/month, paid in ZK. This amount aligns with the intended compensation at the time the proposal was passed, while adjusting for the moving average of the token price. ZKnomist will also have a scope extension in Season 2 which will include Discord management.
- Reporting: Summary to be posted by the end of Month 3, Season 2, that separates reach from engagement and utility (for example: content cadence delivered, engagement quality, and concrete examples of content being reused as ecosystem collateral such as recaps, explainers, case studies, and onboarding references).
Online Educators: not renewed for Season 2
Season 1 Discord data shows declining engagement and limited measurable impact relative to fixed monthly spend.
Monthly active users fell from 375 in September to 168 in January (–55%). Online-to-active conversion declined from ~7–8% to ~4.5% over the same period. Across five months, total activity amounted to 1,392 active user-months, with most interactions concentrated in reactive support categories (bridging, transactions, $ZK questions, and airdrops).
Discord functioned primarily as a clarification surface rather than an active community or growth channel. Community discussion remained low throughout the season, which is acceptable, but reinforces that the platform’s dominant use case is repetitive support and information requests rather than ecosystem activation.
The underlying demand surfaced in Season 1 points to documentation and clarity gaps rather than a need for expanded Discord staffing. Accordingly, the recommended path forward is to strengthen centralized support documentation. Reducing ambiguity at the source is likely to have a greater impact than maintaining a fixed multi-person support layer inside Discord.
Recommended new discord model:
- Move discord to a broadcast + routing surface.
- Archive or remove most channels and retain only a small set (e.g. announcements/updates, governance/news, automated feeds).
- Remaining channels will be read-only, minimizing scam surface area and eliminating expectations of real-time Discord support.
Season 2 execution principle
The Foundation’s operating posture in this market is to commit to a workstreams that show clear impact and can be held to straightforward accountability, and to run experiments through RFP pilots where initiatives can be completed, measured, and stopped quickly if results do not justify continuation.
Reallocation of Workstream Funding Split
Under the original TPP structure, Workstream 1 was proposed at 6.4M ZK out of a 20M ZK total program envelope (~32%), with the remaining 13.6M ZK allocated to experimental RFP initiatives.
Based on Season 1 performance and funding impact, Workstream 1 across both seasons will total ~9M ZK, representing almost 50% of the 20M ZK program budget. This reflects a deliberate reallocation toward higher-conviction, externally impactful workstreams (ZK Latam and ZKnomist), while reducing the proportion of capital reserved for open-ended experimental RFP initiatives.
Importantly, this adjustment does not expand the overall 20M ZK program funding. It simply rebalances capital within it. Workstream 2 retains substantial funding capacity, and the experimental budget remains meaningful, but fixed renewals are now better aligned with demonstrated execution quality and measurable impact.
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