Stop the Illusion: Matter Labs is Treating Governance Like a Dictatorship
It is clear as day now: Matter Labs has no interest in community feedback. They didn’t listen to anyone. They completely ignored the concerns raised by the community who pleaded for a shared burden and a pause to rebuild trust.
Instead of treating us like partners, they treated us like a rubber stamp.
The Harsh Reality
Zero Respect for the Community: Vital, positive proposals that could actually help the ecosystem are dragged out and delayed for months. But a toxic proposal that dilutes holders and hurts sentiment? Speedrun straight on-chain within hours.
The Illusion of Choice: This isn’t a “draft” or a “discussion.” It is a forced mandate. They provided an absolute illusion of feedback while already deciding our opinion was useless.
Zero Shared Risk: While the community is hurting and sentiment is fragile, the team refuses to contribute even a fraction of their own funding to show solidarity. They expect the community to bear 100% of the cost.
A Call to Action for the ZK Community
A decentralized network cannot function under a dictatorship. If we accept this behavior now, we set a precedent that our voices mean absolutely nothing.
We need to revolt against this top-down enforcement.
Do not let them ignore us. We need every single community member, validator, and token holder to mobilize, reject this blatant power move, and VOTE NO against the TPP-18 on-chain. If they won’t listen to our words in the forum, we must force them to listen to our power at the ballot.
Reject the dilution. Reject the dictatorship. Vote NO.
I want to be clear that I support this proposal in principle, because I believe the core strategy needs to be executed promptly. However, I have strong concerns about how this is being handled.
First, I believe open discussion is fundamental to a healthy community. Restricting comments or banning accounts is not the right way to address differing opinions. Second, while I understand that dilution may be necessary, there is a clear imbalance in risk. Most community members purchased their tokens with real money, whereas the team received theirs through allocation at no cost. Asking the community to bear the full burden of dilution while the team contributes nothing feels fundamentally unfair.
Even if some team members or early recipients choose to sell their tokens, that is their right. What I find problematic, however, is the lack of transparency — quietly moving or selling tokens while avoiding clear on-chain visibility. More importantly, the market will not be as understanding as the community. If the team refuses to share any of the dilution risk, speculators will not hesitate to short the token aggressively. This could ultimately make it much harder for the team to achieve their intended outcomes, as they may end up having to sell at much lower prices than expected.
For these reasons, I believe the team should also contribute a portion of their own tokens to this proposal. Doing so would demonstrate shared responsibility and help align incentives between the team and the community.
@wjfwd1987 I completely respect your long-term commitment to the technology. But we need to look at reality, not the roadmap they are dangling in front of us.
You hit the nail on the head regarding the massive imbalance of risk. But it’s even worse than that. This isn’t a management mistake; it’s a total breakdown of the social contract between Matter Labs and the community.
The “Draft” Was a Psychological Mirage
They threw a “Draft” into the forum, calling it a discussion. In less than a couple of days, before the community could even digest it, they slapped it on-chain as a binding vote. Why? Because they never wanted our feedback. They wanted the illusion of a DAO so they could legally and socially justify treating retail investors like a bottomless ATM. If they treat us like cockroaches whose opinions don’t matter during the “discussion” phase, imagine how they will treat us once they secure a 12-month blank check.
Delayed Benefits for Us, Speedruned Dilution for Them
For months, this community has practically begged for value accrual, revenue generation, and interop fees to be implemented to protect token holders. What happens to those proposals? They get dragged out, delayed, and buried in “review.” But the moment Alex and his team want to secure an allocation worth $1M a month? It gets speedruned to the on-chain ballot at lightning speed. Their priorities are crystal clear: their funding comes first, our survival comes last.
Total Privatization of Profit, Total Socialization of Risk
They are asking us to absorb 100% of the dilution while they protect 100% of their personal allocations. As you rightly pointed out, they didn’t buy their tokens with hard-earned money—we did. If they truly believed this proposal would instantly supercharge the ecosystem, they would gladly front 10% of their own tokens to fund it, knowing the ecosystem’s growth would make them wealthier in the long run. Their refusal to share even a fraction of the burden tells you everything you need to know: they want to de-risk themselves at our expense.
To everyone reading this:
If we vote YES out of fear or “hope,” we are teaching Matter Labs that they can completely ignore us, bypass the forum, and force any mandate they want down our throats. The market sees this blatant disregard for governance, and speculators will short this token into the ground because a project that abuses its own community has no floor.
We aren’t just voting on a budget here. We are voting on whether ZKsync is a decentralized network or Alex Gluchowski’s private dictatorship.
Stand up for your hard-earned money. Demand real shared risk. Vote NO on TPP-18.
I would typically vote against proposals that involve significant dilution. However, in this case, I feel I must support it because the stakes are high. If successful, the potential benefits could be substantial for everyone involved.
That said, I still hope the team can find a better way to balance the risks. As both the core development team and members of this community, it would be reassuring if the team could also share some of the risk, rather than placing the full burden on the community. This would help demonstrate that the team truly sees itself as part of the community, not just as its operators.
@wjfwd1987 that word “if” is exactly the problem. Matter Labs has built this entire proposal and all their promises on “ifs”, but they demand our very real, guaranteed dilution today.
I’m glad you agree that the risk balance is fundamentally broken. However, I’ve realized that asking a dictatorship for reassurance or “hope” is a losing battle , they have made it crystal clear they do not care about this community’s feedback.
I can respect your choice, but I refuse to stay passive and just watch my hard-earned money get diluted into oblivion by a team that won’t even give a single token of their own to share the risk. I am taking control of my vote. My answer is a definitive NO.