I appreciate the specificity in this post. These questions deserve factual answers, so I want to provide them. For context, I work at Matter Labs as a BD manager. Matter Labs is the engineering company that builds and operates ZKsync’s core technology, including Prividium. I don’t work for the ZKsync Association or the ZKsync Foundation. These are three separate entities with distinct mandates. That distinction matters for most of what follows.
- Understanding the three-entity structure
ZKsync operates through three independent organizations. The ZKsync Association is the governance operator and issuer of the ZK token. The ZKsync Foundation drives ecosystem growth through strategic partnerships and infrastructure funding. Matter Labs builds and maintains the protocol, the ZK Stack, Prividium, and handles the majority of enterprise business development alongside the Foundation. Each has its own treasury, its own reporting obligations, and its own accountability structure. Treating them as one entity and then drawing conclusions about “treasury spending” creates a misleading picture, so I want to be precise about what each one controls.
- On Association treasury spending
The ZKsync Association was allocated 6.14B ZK at TGE. Of that, approximately 183M ZK has been minted to date across 16 governance-approved Token Program Proposals. That’s roughly 3% of the allocation. Tokens don’t sit in a wallet; they remain unminted until a governance vote exceeding 630M votes approves their creation through Capped Minter smart contracts. This is arguably the most structured token deployment process in the L2 space.
The Association published a full operational report covering September 2024 through October 2025, detailing every Token Program, minting amount, governance action, and emergency response. Two public Dune Analytics dashboards track this in real time: theZK Nation Governance Overview and the Token Program Minting Tracker. The data is onchain and verifiable by anyone.
- On the specific programs you referenced
The community activation program (TPP-8) is capped at 20M ZK. Those tokens were not newly minted. They were recovered funds from the April 2025 airdrop security incident. Of that 20M, roughly half funds BD and marketing managers whose job is onboarding new partners and chains to grow the ZKsync network. The remainder supports both community content initiatives and builder programs.
The 1M ZK creator allocation you cited is approximately $20K USD for three months of work. For context, standard marketing engagements in this space run $20-50K per month. This is well below market rate.
- On the Foundation transparency request
The original request for a treasury breakdown was directed at the ZKsync Foundation, which is a separate entity from the Association. The Foundation acknowledged the ask, provided the ZKA 2024-2025 operational report and indicated they were evaluating what additional information could be shared. That follow-up hasn’t materialized in the form the community requested. I understand the frustration. But it’s important to separate that question from the Association’s record, which is documented, onchain, and public.
- On token value accrual. This is where I want to push back hardest.
The post frames this as an unanswered question that’s been lingering. The reality is that ZKnomics was introduced in November 2025, less than five months ago. In that time, two detailed proposals have been published for community review.
Part I laid out the core architecture: a governance-controlled economic mechanism funded by two vectors. The first is onchain interoperability fees generated when assets and messages move across ZKsync chains and Prividiums. The second is offchain enterprise licensing revenue from advanced modules used by regulated institutions. All proceeds flow into a unified system that buys ZK from the market and allocates it across token burn, staking rewards for decentralized operators, and ecosystem treasury funding.
Part II went deeper on why interoperability creates durable token utility. As Prividiums move into production with major financial institutions, each cross-chain message requires verification, and each verification can carry a protocol fee. The scale opportunity is structural: SWIFT alone processes over 50 million messages per day. If even a modest fraction of institutional coordination migrates to cryptographic, Ethereum-anchored systems, the fee base becomes significant and recurring.
ZIP-14 already upgraded the ZK token with a burn function and a 21B hard cap. The ZK Token Staking Pilot Program is live, testing delegate-to-stake mechanics. These are Phase 1 deliverables. The comprehensive model is being built in the open, through governance, at a pace that matches the complexity of what’s being designed.
Asking “where is the value accrual model?” when the model was published four months ago and is actively progressing through governance review doesn’t reflect the current state of the project.
- On marketing spend and why it matters.
I work the enterprise deals. I can tell you directly: ZKsync was historically recognized for top-tier technology but was consistently outmaneuvered by competitors with inferior tech and louder brands. That’s not a sustainable position when you’re trying to close partnerships with Deutsche Bank, Fidelity International, and the institutions building on Prividium.
The marketing restructure over the past year has produced measurable results: stronger partner pipeline, increased brand recognition, and faster onboarding. The community creators in these programs amplify existing messaging on topics like institutional infrastructure and regulatory readiness, which are central to what we’re actually building and shipping. In 2025 alone, ZKsync secured earned media on Nasdaq, NYSE, Forbes, and Coindesk. These outcomes don’t happen without deliberate brand investment.
If the technology were not real, no amount of marketing would produce partnerships with the caliber of institutions now building on ZKsync.
- On what the team shipped in 2025
Because the post implies the project is spinning its wheels, here’s what actually shipped this year: Prividium launched and moved into production institutional adoption. L1 Interop went live, giving ZKsync chains native access to Ethereum’s liquidity without bridges. The Atlas upgrade, powered by Airbender, delivered materially faster proving and lower costs. The ZK token began its transition from pure governance to utility through the ZKnomics proposals. Production deployments launched across enterprise, consumer, and financial use cases with partners including Abstract, Deutsche Bank (Memento), UBS, Tradable, Lens, and ADI. ZKsync Managed Services launched to reduce deployment friction for institutional partners.
This is not a project coasting on narrative campaigns. The narrative exists because the substance does.