Matter Labs | Q2 2025 Deliverables Report

Protocol Development
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Summary

In Q2 2025, Matter Labs advanced ZKsync’s Elastic Network vision with five major technology milestones, new institutional deployments, and the launch of 5 new chains on mainnet. The quarter’s highlights included:

  • achieving EVM equivalence on Era through the EVM interpreter,
  • releasing the solx compiler,
  • launching Prividium for enterprise-grade private finance,
  • deploying Gateway for native interoperability, and
  • unveiling Airbender, the world’s fastest open-source RISC-V prover.

The Elastic Network grew to $3.3B TVL (+21% QoQ) and 2.8M active addresses (+27% QoQ), cementing ZKsync’s leadership in real-world assets with $2.3B on Era alone, second only to Ethereum. Institutional adoption accelerated with Memento and Deutsche Bank announcing DAMA 2, a Prividium-based chain for compliant tokenized assets and stablecoins. Matter Labs also advanced sequencer decentralization, improved developer and user experience, and continued to deliver the secure, high-performance infrastructure that powers ZKsync’s role as Ethereum’s execution engine.

1. Performance & Cost Efficiency

Matter Labs shipped critical upgrades to lower costs, improve performance, and prepare the proving ecosystem for scale.

  • EVM Interpreter (Mainnet, Apr 23 - v27 upgrade): Era achieved full EVM bytecode compatibility, allowing developers to deploy unmodified Ethereum contracts using existing tools like Foundry, Hardhat, and Remix. This milestone unlocks best-in-class DevEx while retaining ZKsync’s performance benefits.
  • FFLONK Verifier (Mainnet, Apr 23 - v27 upgrade): Introduced a pairing-based verifier reducing onchain verification costs by up to 30%, making proof-heavy applications more economical.
  • Precompiles (Mainnet, Jun 3 - v28 upgrade): Shipped native support for ECAdd, ECMul, ECPairing, and ModExp precompiles, reducing cryptographic verification gas costs by ≈18× (94%) (e.g., 6.8M → 0.37M).
  • **solx Compiler (v0.1.0-alpha.4, Jun 2025):** Introduced solx, a new LLVM-based optimizing compiler for Solidity. solx serves as a drop-in replacement for solc, already integrated with Foundry, and focuses on runtime gas efficiency by applying optimizations like lifting storage operations out of loops and advanced constant folding. It passes internal and Solidity compiler test suites (including real-world projects like Uniswap V2 and Solmate), though stack-too-deep errors remain in larger projects. While still pre-alpha, solx demonstrates measurable gas savings and positions ZKsync for future extensibility to new VMs such as RISC-V.
  • **Airbender Announcement (Jun 24, 2025):** Matter Labs unveiled Airbender, the world’s fastest open-source RISC-V prover. Airbender reaches 21.8 MHz on a single H100 GPU, delivering more than 6× faster performance than competing zkVMs. Proofs cost as little as $0.0001 per transfer, making high-volume and even fee-free applications viable. This level of performance previously required 50 to 160 GPUs. Airbender enables near real-time interoperability, home proving, and scalable low-cost infrastructure across all ZKsync chains.

2. Decentralization & Security: Trustless Infrastructure at Scale

The Elastic Network moved closer to sequencer decentralization and trust-minimized proving.

  • ChonkyBFT Consensus (Dynamic Validator Set):

    Advanced sequencer decentralization by making the validator set onchain configurable via a smart contract, rather than fixed off-chain. This allows validator membership to be updated more flexibly, though at this stage changes are still expected to involve operator governance. The upgrade lays the foundation for future permissionless participation, aligning with Ethereum’s decentralization roadmap.

  • Proving Networks API:

    Deployed the staging version of the Proving Networks API, enabling distributed proof generation through integrations with Fermah and Lagrange. The staging setup is now live and fully integrated, with testnet deployment currently underway. Pending successful testing, we plan to extend the rollout to mainnet environments, following a cautious approach to ensure performance stability and prevent any service degradation.

3. Privacy: Enterprise-Grade Confidentiality for ZKsync chains

ZKsync advanced privacy infrastructure to meet the needs of institutions and enterprise use cases.

  • **Prividium Launch (May 2025):** Released ZKsync Prividium, a fully customizable, enterprise-grade blockchain platform that combines privacy, built-in compliance, and Ethereum anchoring. Institutions can deploy Prividium chains in private cloud or on-premises environments with full control over data, KYC/KYB integration, audit logs, and role-based access. Every transaction is verified with ZK proofs and finalized on Ethereum, ensuring tamper-proof integrity. The first production deployment, Memento ZK Chain (in partnership with Deutsche Bank), launched on mainnet to deliver compliant tokenized fund servicing with private validium architecture, KYC-gated access, onchain identity, and automated fund operations
  • Enterprise Momentum: Coverage from The Defiant and others positioned Prividium as the leading platform for regulated DeFi adoption .
  • Prividium with Interop pilot: Matter Labs built the infrastructure and application flows required for the upcoming institutional interoperability pilot. Engineering work delivered Prividium-based environments anchored to Ethereum, integrated selective disclosure and ZKsync Gateway for cross-chain proof aggregation, and developed application layers to showcase two high-value use cases: cross-border payments and intraday repo. This groundwork enables the first institutional showcase of protocol-level interoperability in Q3 2025, where financial institutions will validate near-instant settlement, private interoperability, and regulatory auditability across interconnected Prividiums.

4. Developer & User Experience

Developer tooling and user-facing features continued to improve, bringing Web2-grade simplicity to Web3 infrastructure.

  • Etherscan: Completed the integration work with Etherscan to support ZKsync’s EVM Interpreter, enabling developers to verify and interact with contracts deployed on Era using the same workflow they rely on for Ethereum. This brought ZKsync to full parity with Ethereum’s most widely used block explorer, ensuring that EVM-equivalent contracts deployed on ZKsync can be transparently inspected, verified, and audited by the broader developer ecosystem.

  • ZKsync Block Explorer Enhancements: The ZKsync Block Explorer expanded support for EVM-equivalent contracts, enabling auto-verification for contracts with previously verified bytecode, even when metadata differs (e.g., comments, file paths, optimization settings). Partial verification provides fallback support for minor mismatches, improving DevEx and contract transparency. A new token directory was also introduced, listing all ERC-20 tokens with metadata and real-time prices where available, simplifying discovery and UX.

  • Eth Sender Optimizations: Introduced adaptive backoff logic for blob fee calculation, replacing the previous linear doubling approach. This improves reliability of L1 submissions and prevents unnecessary fee escalation during network congestion. While the exact impact on fee savings has not been measured, the change significantly enhances the stability and efficiency of the eth-sender component.

  • ZKsync OS Alpha: Released an early alpha version of ZKsync OS (formerly Boojum OS) focused on the State Transition Function (STF) and core protocol components. This version introduced a simplified Anvil integration for local testing and an initial L1/protocol integration covering public input structure, batch commitment and execution, and forced deploy support. It represented the first internal milestone toward a unified proving and execution environment across ZK Stack chains.

  • ZKsync SSO Recovery Options: Smart Sign-On now supports two new recovery mechanisms, both externally audited by OpenZeppelin:

    • Guardian Recovery allows accounts to designate trusted guardians, who can collectively approve recovery through threshold signatures. The audit of validator contracts confirmed correctness and robustness against collusion.
    • OIDC Recovery integrates OpenID Connect, enabling users to recover access using federated logins such as Google. Separate audits covered both the Solidity contracts and circuit-level logic to ensure recovery flows cannot be bypassed or spoofed.

  • Easy On-Ramp: Introduced Easy On-Ramp, a fully hosted fiat-to-any-token gateway integrated into the ZKsync Portal. Users can buy ETH or any ERC-20 on Era with credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or bank transfer. The service leverages Transak for fiat rails and LI.FI for automatic token swaps, allowing users to purchase in fiat and settle directly into their target token on ZKsync without bridging. As a hosted service, it requires no SDK integration or provider management from developers, and delivers a simple, Web2-grade checkout experience for end users.

5. Interoperability & Elastic Network

Interoperability advanced with Gateway, audited messaging, and multiple new chain launches.

  • Gateway Launch (May 2025): Deployed ZKsync Gateway to mainnet, marking the first milestone toward native interoperability across ZKsync chains. Gateway batches and aggregates validity proofs from multiple chains into a single recursive proof submitted to Ethereum, reducing settlement costs while preserving Ethereum-grade security. While cross-chain messaging and shared liquidity will be enabled in future milestones, this deployment laid the foundation by making Ethereum-bridged assets natively fungible across all participating ZKsync chains. It also set the stage for subsequent milestones, including activation as the settlement layer on June 11 (ZIP-10) and the interop messaging audit (v29) later in Q2.

  • ZKsync Gateway Activated as Settlement Layer (Jun 11, 2025): Following ZIP-10 approval, ZKsync Gateway was activated as the Elastic Network’s settlement layer. Gateway now aggregates proofs from multiple ZK Chains into a single recursive proof committed to Ethereum, reducing settlement costs and providing the foundation for low-latency interoperability. This upgrade transitions Gateway from pilot to production infrastructure, ensuring cross-chain messaging and asset transfers are finalized with Ethereum-level security.

  • Interop Messaging Audit (v29, May 19–Jun 26): Initiated an external audit of the native interoperability messaging system, a core component for enabling seamless, low-fee cross-chain transfers within the Elastic Network. The audit covers the design and implementation of protocol-level messaging that allows ZKsync chains to communicate without third-party bridges, ensuring that cross-chain calls and asset transfers inherit Ethereum-grade security. This milestone validates the correctness and safety of the messaging contracts before they are deployed to mainnet, making it a critical step toward production-ready native interoperability.

  • Chain Launches:

    • Live on Mainnet:
      • Space & Time (Apr 2025): First validium chain in Caldera’s mainnet family, designed for verifiable data services.
      • XPLA (Apr 2025): Entertainment-focused chain positioned as a “trusted gateway to Web3,” notable for being ISAE 3000-certified.
      • LaChain (Ripio, Apr 2025): A self-hosted chain by Ripio, powering Web3 developers, projects, and communities across Latin America.
      • Memento (Apr 2025): The first ZKsync Prividium chain, purpose-built for institutional-grade digital asset infrastructure, supporting tokenized funds, stablecoins, and RWAs.
      • ZKsync Gateway (May 2025): Deployed to mainnet as the first milestone toward native interoperability across ZKsync chains, later activated as the Elastic Network’s canonical settlement layer.
    • Deployed to Testnet:
      • Heurist - a sovereign Layer 2 blockchain, crafted as the orchestration layer for the Heurist decentralized AI cloud. Its mission is to coordinate compute, data services, and agents-as-a-service under one permissionless and scalable roof.

  • Elastic Network Growth (as of June 30, 2025):

    • TVL: $3.3B (+21% QoQ).
    • Active Addresses: 2.8M (+27% QoQ).
    • Transactions: 92M (11.8 avg TPS).

    RWA adoption on Era reached $2.3B, positioning ZKsync as #2 after Ethereum.

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