Serious Concerns About Treasury Spending in ‘Community Activation RFP 3: ZKsync Institutional Narrative Experiment’ While ZK Token Continues to Decline

This proposal is honestly embarrassing.

The token has been under constant selling pressure, yet the treasury keeps spending hundreds of thousands of ZK on “narrative experiments” and social media campaigns. A few weeks ago millions of tokens were already distributed in similar so-called community initiatives. Now another 833k ZK is being allocated for coordinated messaging. From a token holder perspective, this looks like treasury-funded propaganda while the token continues to be dumped.

Where are the real measures to support the token economy?

• Where are buybacks or burn mechanisms tied to protocol revenue?
• Where is the plan to create real demand for ZK instead of funding marketing waves?
• Why is treasury spending focused on narrative control rather than value creation?

Staking numbers already show the problem: ZKsync struggles to reach even ~200M tokens staked while a similar amount unlocks every month. That is not a sign of strong confidence.

A simple question to the founders and team: do you actually hold ZK tokens yourselves, and are they locked long term? If the core team is not aligned with the token, why should the community be?

The community supported ZKsync because of the technology. What we are seeing now looks more like treasury extraction than responsible governance.

Focus on building real value, not funding marketing campaigns while the token bleeds.

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I agree with this. There should be zero marketing until the interop layer is fully functional and ZKsync ERA is upgraded to Atlas. There’s no point pushing narratives or marketing until the Elastic Chain is fully functioning and generating interop fees and yield for users.

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I agree but these issues go deeper than treasury spending on “narratives.”

We now have a clear contradiction between what has been promised and what is actually being delivered. Back in November, the team introduced the “From Governance to Utility” direction for the ZK token. The idea was explicit: network revenue from fees, interoperability, and enterprise licensing would be used for buybacks, burns, and staking rewards, creating a direct value feedback loop for token holders. This was presented as a fundamental shift in tokenomics.

Today, there is no visible implementation of buybacks or burns, no transparency on revenue generated from partnerships or enterprise use, and no clear progress toward value accrual to the token. At the same time, treasury spending continues, particularly on marketing and “narrative experiments.”

This raises a more fundamental question. ZKsync is actively pursuing institutional adoption through enterprise infrastructure, tokenized assets, and licensing of its technology. These are expected to generate real revenue streams. So where is that revenue going? Why is none of it visibly flowing back into the token economy? If such revenue exists, why is marketing not funded from it? Why is the token treasury consistently used as the default source of funding?

Equally concerning is the lack of engagement on these topics. These are not minor questions, they go to the core of token holder alignment, treasury responsibility, and long-term credibility. Yet there are no clear answers, no detailed breakdowns, and no serious engagement when these concerns are raised. It is reasonable to ask why good-faith questions from the community are not being addressed transparently.

The absence of measurable progress on previously announced token utility mechanisms, combined with continued discretionary treasury spending and limited transparency, is increasingly undermining confidence and raising legitimate concerns about governance alignment. It is not surprising that parts of the community are beginning to question the integrity and sustainability of the current model.

At this point, it appears that value may be created at the infrastructure or enterprise level, while token holders are not clearly participating in that value and are simultaneously funding ecosystem expenses through dilution. That structure is difficult to justify long term.

So the key questions remain. Where does revenue from partnerships and enterprise adoption actually go? Why has there been no execution on buybacks or burns months after the proposal? Why is treasury spending prioritized over token value alignment? And why are these questions not being seriously addressed?

Until there are clear and transparent answers, every new treasury allocation will continue to raise the same concern: is this ecosystem being built for token holders, or at their expense?

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