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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These concerns have been addressed in detail here, including treasury deployment, ZKnomics progress, and what shipped in 2025.

On the specific question of why enterprise revenue isn’t funding buybacks yet: ZKnomics describes a value accrual model built on two vectors, interop fees and enterprise licensing. Both depend on infrastructure that is still moving into production. The interop layer is nearing readiness, not live at scale. Prividium deployments with institutional partners are in early production stages, not generating mature recurring revenue. You can’t execute buybacks from revenue streams that haven’t fully materialized yet. ZKnomics was proposed in November 2025, less than five months ago, and it describes what happens when those revenue streams come online. ZIP-14 already added burn functionality and a 21B hard cap. The Staking Pilot is live. These are the building blocks, not the finished system.

The framing of “months after the proposal, nothing has happened” misrepresents both the timeline and the progress. Five months from proposal to phased implementation of a complete tokenomics restructuring, while the underlying infrastructure is simultaneously being deployed, is not inaction. It is sequencing.

Let’s stop pretending this is new.

The idea of buybacks, burns, and real token utility was pushed long before this “ZKonomics” framing 5 months ago ,including through ecosystem messaging and campaigns. Rewriting that timeline now is misleading.

So far, the reality is:

* No buybacks
* No burns
* No revenue-linked staking
* No transparency on actual revenue from partnerships or enterprise deals

Yet treasury spending ,especially on “narratives” , continues.

So where is the value going?

If these partnerships and institutional efforts are real and generating revenue, why is none of it visibly flowing back to the token? Why are token holders funding everything through treasury emissions while receiving no clear upside?

The market is already answering this. Confidence is collapsing, and the token continues to bleed. That’s not just conditions , that’s a direct reflection of broken alignment.

And let’s be honest about incentives.

For many holders, this meant real capital and real losses. It’s easy to downplay that when you’re not exposed in the same way. But for the community, this isn’t theoretical , it’s credibility being destroyed in real time.

So the core question remains:

Why launch a token at all if there is still no enforced mechanism for it to capture value?

Right now, it increasingly looks like value is extracted from token holders to fund the ecosystem ,not shared with them.

Until there are concrete mechanisms (not promises), every new proposal will be seen exactly the same way: dilution dressed up as strategy.