Season 1 Review: ZKnomics Staking Pilot Program

[keating]

The Staking Pilot Program Admins and Tally present the ZKnomics Staking Pilot Season 1. The Season 1 reflection also includes an announcement for Season 2 below.

Overview

The ZKnoimcs Token Staking Pilot Program was deployed as a time-limited pilot that allows ZK token holders to stake their tokens and receive rewards while strengthening active governance participation. When participants stake, they delegate their voting power to active governance participants (Delegates) and receive ZK rewards in return.

The purpose of the Staking Pilot Program is twofold:

• test and assess Tally staking infrastructure & staking parameters in preparation for the decentralized sequencer

• increase delegated ZK + active voting power via the built-in delegate-to-stake mechanism

The pilot program was designed to run for two 3-month seasons. Season 1 was launched on February 9th, and ran until May 11th. This report summarizes key metrics and takeaways from Season 1 of the Staking Pilot Program and offers a suggestion for how to move forward.

Season 1 Key Stats

Key Staking Metrics:

Find all key staking metrics here.

Season 1 Goal from Proposal: 400M ZK staked in total, with a maximum of 10M ZK distributed over 3 months (2.5% for 3-months or 10% annualized), 0 incidents.

• Max Amount ZK staked: 355M ZK (87% of 400M cap)

• Max Total TVL: ~$7M

• Total # of addresses staked: 4,397

• Total ZK reward distributed: 5.3M ZK out of 10M ZK available for Season 1

• Average Time Staked (at time of report publish): 65

• Number of incidents: 0

All unminted ZK from the Season 1 capped minter will remain unminted. All minter roles have been revoked from the Season 1 capped minter by the Program Admin.

Active Delegation Metrics:

Season 1 Goal from Proposal: Net increase of +200M active voting power (50% of staked ZK)

• Total active delegation impact:

  • Net new delegation from announcement of Season 1 (Feb 2) to end of Season 1 (May11): 205M ZK

  • Announcement of Season 1 start (Feb 2): 958M

  • Start of Season 1 (Feb 9): 1,024B

  • Peak active delegation (May 29th): 1.187B

  • End of Season 1 (May 11): 1.163B

  Review total active delegation query from the ZKsync Governance Performance Dashboard.

  The sudden decrease in total active delegation that took place on April 30th was due to some active Delegates becoming inactive by not voting on ZIP-15.

• Number of Delegates who received delegations from the Staking Pilot: 173

  

• Delegates who received most delegations (top 6):

  Delegate	Description	Delegation Received via Staking Pilot	Total Delegation at time of report
  L2Beat	Impartial watchdog for the Ethereum Layer2 ecosystem	78,094,735	148.2M
  SyncSwap	Largest app on ZKsync Era	67,681,392	128.36M
  Matter Labs	Core development team behind ZKsync	63,976,060	134.38M
  Memento	ZKsync chain & integration partner for Prividium	31,386,617	44.61M
  Grow the Pie	Ethereum ecosystem analytics	16,210,600	40.43M
  ZKsync LATAM	Ecosystem partner supporting BD in LATAM	14,255,333	24.3M

Key Staking Infra Tested

• Tally’s Staking Infra: The Staking Pilot was deployed fully on Tally’s staking infra, all which were considered a success. This includes:

  • Staker contract: The contracts had no security incidents, bugs, or downtime throughout Season 1.

    • ZKStaker Contract: 0x24B5292aDC6CF2373Ddbc09c8699B4F88C6b2CDB

    • ZKStaker Contract Audits

  • Staking interface: The ZKnomics Staking Pilot interface had no security incidents, bugs, or downtime throughout Season 1. There was only 1 UX improvement made to the interface to ensure a smoother network confirmation process.

  • Delegate-to-stake mechanism: increased total active voting power by about 22% (from ~957M to ~1.162B)

• Tally tagging system & featured (active) Delegates filter: Launched in January 2026, the Key Participants and Active Delegate tagging system enabled a “Featured” filter for the Staking Pilot interface, allowing ZK holders to quickly identify active delegates. This feature helped ensure staking program rewards are contingent upon delegating to an active delegate. By simplifying the discovery of active representatives, this feature significantly increased active delegated voting power throughout Season 1.

• Increasing APR levels: The staking program started at 3% and gradually increased to 10%, but there was a lot of operational work to change the APR. The APR often fell slightly short (e.g. 9.7% instead of 10%) due to new stake entering the system between the time of the mint request and execution.

• Delay Mod for ZK reward minting: To test an additional security layer between the program service provider (Tally) and the Program Admin, a Delay Mod was deployed to sit between the Season 1 capped minter and the staker contract, creating a veto window for the Program Admin and any reward mint requests from Tally. The delay window was originally set to 12 hours, but was decreased to 6 hours around halfway through the program to provide more accurate APR targeting.

Key Takeaways & Improvements for Future Seasons

Season 1 of the Staking Pilot Program was successful in fulfilling the purpose of the Staking Pilot program. It successfully tested the Tally staking infrastructure, various staking parameters and management tooling, and the delegate-to-stake mechanism successfully increased the total active voting power, strengthening the ZKsync governance system.

There were also some lessons learned, specifically in regards to APR% management.

• Tally interface worked and was intuitive: There were a few minor support requests throughout the entire 3 months of Season 1, and one was interface functionality related and it was addresses within 24 hrs.

• Delegate-to-stake: The delegate-to-stake mechanism was key for strengthening the governance system, reaching active delegation amount that is double quorum (630M ZK). It is highly recommended to include this mechanism in future staking programs.

• Featured/Active Delegate Filter: This feature on the Staking Pilot interface increased active delegated voting power throughout Season 1. However, to mitigate risks of governance capture caused by heavy delegation concentration on certain Delegates, the filter required manual adjustments throughout Season 1. To ensure long-term decentralization, we propose implementing a hard cap for the “Featured” list. For example, “Delegates exceeding a threshold of X ZK would be automatically excluded from the featured filter to encourage a more balanced distribution of voting power.”

• Yield Optimization: Targeted APR was a pain point. If future seasons or staking programs use targeted APR, it would recommended to explore onchain automation options. These options were explored before launching Season 1, however we decided not to implement for Season 1 until we understood the need. However, we suggest exploring alternative options as well, including fixed APR, to optimize outcomes for participants.

• Participation: Staking appetite at various APR%. There was a slow progression of staked ZK over Season 1, but even as the targeted APR% increased, the participation threshold (400M) was never met. There needs to be more research done to understand an optimized APR%. Another known blocker to participation was lack of access for custodied tokens. Enabling staking participation with key custodians will be a key adjustment needed for future staking programs.

• Delay Mod: Although this was a good feature to test for this specific set up, it may not be necessary or realistic depending on future APR / reward distribution setups.

Season 2 Update: Paused

Although Season 1 has been a success, the Program Admin is deciding to pause moving forward with Season 2.

The decision to pause the program following Season 1 is a strategic decision to prioritize long-term network efficiency over temporary pilot metrics. By pausing now, resources can be reallocate toward designing a more robust, “institution-ready” staking architecture that aligns with the planned deployment of the decentralized sequencer currently scheduled for later this year.

Reasons for this recommendation:

• Sequencer Alignment: The next season of the Staking Pilot should be more closely aligned with the expected setup and parameters of the envisaged deployment of the decentralized sequencer, which has shifting to late H2 2026.

• Institutional Access: Current custodian limitations prevent large-scale participation. Given the complexity of enabling staking on the custodian side, it would be most effective to have them enable it once a more permanent contract and staking system is confirmed.

• Assess APR model & contract: In order to better optimize outcomes for staking participants, the APR model and staker contract should be assess and potentially updated before moving forward with a future season.

The Program Admin will notify the community if Season 2 is unpaused later this year. Noting that the capped minters for the Staking Pilot Program expire on December 31, 2026.

Have feedback about Season 1 of the Staking Pilot?

Please share your feedback and thoughts here on the forum!

[Curia]

Thanks to Tally and the Program Admins for the comprehensive write-up. The transparency on metrics, infra outcomes, and rationale for the pause is appreciated.

Two observations on the Season 1 data that we think warrant follow-up before any Season 2 relaunched.

1. Delegation was heavily concentrated

The review notes the Featured filter “required manual adjustments throughout Season 1” to mitigate concentration risk. The numbers underline why:

Delegate	Received via Staking Pilot
L2Beat	78.09M ZK
SyncSwap	67.68M ZK
Matter Labs	63.98M ZK
Memento	31.39M ZK
Grow the Pie	16.21M ZK
ZKsync LATAM	14.26M ZK
Top 6 total	271.60M ZK

Of 173 eligible delegates and 355M ZK staked at peak, roughly 76% of pilot delegation flowed to just 6 addresses. The top 3 alone received ~209.7M ZK, which by itself exceeds the program’s actual net new active delegation of +205M. In other words, removing the top 3 from the pilot would have left net new active delegation roughly flat.

We agree with the proposed automatic hard cap on the Featured filter. Given these numbers, it should be a precondition for any Season 2 relaunch rather than a future exploration item, with the threshold (the “X” referenced in the review) published for public review before launch.

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2. Active delegation grew, but proposal participation did not grow with it

The review measures success through growth in active delegated VP (957M → 1.162B, +22%). Applying the same 5-proposal rolling window that the Active Delegate filter uses for its activity criteria, average proposal participation tells a different story:

Window	Proposals included	Average participation
Pre-program	TPP-11, TPP-12, TPP-13, ZIP-14, TPP-14	957.76M
Season 1	GAP-4, TPP-15, TPP-16, TPP-17, ZIP-15	968.77M

Over the period in which active delegated VP grew +22%, the 5-proposal window average participation grew only +1.1% (+11M ZK). Expressed as a participation rate (votes cast ÷ active delegated VP):

• Pre-program: ~958M / ~958M ≈ ~100%
• End of Season 1: ~969M / 1.162B ≈ ~83%

The new delegated VP captured by the staking pilot is not translating into proportional voting activity. This connects directly to the concentration finding: with ~76% of pilot delegation sitting with six addresses, the new active delegation is sensitive to a small number of delegates skipping votes. The review itself attributes the April 30 active delegation drop to delegates becoming inactive after missing ZIP-15.

[theshelb]

Hey @Curia - thanks for the response! Good observations. All learnings to be thinking about before launch future seasons/version of staking for ZKsync. I can add a bit of detail given the Gov Team was involved in the Tally Delegate Tagging project that was then used in the Staking Pilot interface for the “featured” delegate sort default.

The purpose of the Delegate tagging project was an independent project meant to help make it easier for token holders to identify a) active delegates and b) understand which key ZKsync builders and partners are participating in governance (e.g. ZKsync chains, apps, technical partners, etc.).

This tagging system was used on the Staking Pilot for the same purpose. This was particularly important given that rewards were conditional to stakers delegating to active Delegates. In the design, the “featured” filter was randomize, meaning every time someone visited the page the order of the featured list was different. It was also possible to remove the filter and search for any Delegate to delegate to. Additional information is available in the Staking Pilot FAQ under “How are Delegates displayed on the staking pilot interface?”

The concentration of delegation observed to L2Beat, SyncSwap & Matter Labs was something that was observed & monitored throughout the program. These 3 delegates were removed from the featured list mid-S1 to avoid further concentration. In the future, staking programs need to account for this. For example, the “featured” filter may need to be adjusted to automatically not include any Delegate that has over (example) 100M ZK delegated. Curious what you (and others) think about that threshold?

@Curia

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2. Active delegation grew, but proposal participation did not grow with it

Good observation. As you noted, this was due to a few Delegates who were previously active becoming inactive during S1. This is a more nuanced thing to measure as participation differs from proposal to proposal/proposal type, but worth taking into consideration as how to improve future set ups.

@Curia

new active delegation is sensitive to a small number of delegates skipping votes

The voting record of all 6 Delegates mentioned above has been 5/5 of the last five votes. Given active delegation is defined as voting on 2/5 votes, these folks would have to miss 3 votes before becoming inactive. Stakers are able to - and incentivized to - redelegate to a different Delegate if they become inactive otherwise they will not receive rewards. As S1 ended shortly after ZIP-15, we never saw a redelegation effort of stakers, however would expect to see stakers adjust their delegations before any future iterations to ensure they are delegating to active delegates in order to earn rewards.

[Axia]

Thank you for this update. Will claiming rewards be open until the capped minters for the Staking Pilot program expire on December 31,2026?

[theshelb]

Hey @Axia - claiming for rewards will remain open until announced otherwise. As the tokens for rewards had to be minted to be distributed on the Staking Pilot interface, they are not tied to the capped minters anymore. The Program Admin will share more updates once a next steps for Season 2 are decided.