Below is a summary of the ZKsync Delegate Meetup that was hosted on Tuesday, November 12th in Bangkok between 9:30am and 12:30pm. There were 23 Delegates in attendance, representing a range of interests, experience, and voting power.
Objectives & Session Introduction
This meetup had two primary objectives:
- Bring Delegates together to meet and get to know each other, provide an opportunity to work together in person
- Have Delegates think through some of the bigger topics and themes that have been top of mind over the past few months
The meetup began with a round of introductions and a short icebreaker.
Workshop Structure & Breakout Notes
The workshop helped Delegates identify ZKsync Governance challenges that are top of mind.
The workshop topic collection process was done in two ways:
- Forum post to allow those not in attendance to contribute
- Live Mentimeter Poll (see results here)
The results of both the forum post and the poll were grouped into the follow four themes:
- Vision for ZK Chains: How might governance contribute to bringing the vision of the Elastic Chain to reality via protocol/chain/app development?
- TPP Success: What might elevate the quality of Token Program Proposals? For example: standards, examples, templates, and toolkits.
- Decentralization: How might we increase the number of active Delegates, stimulate healthy delegation/re-delegation, increase quality engagement on the forum, and engage ZK Chains involved in governance?
- Ecosystem Collaborations: How might we define the relationship between the ZKsync protocol, ZK Chain devs, Delegates, Foundation, etc. to better collectively contribute to the North Star?
The Delegates self-selected into four groups to workshop, each focused on one of the four topics (Vision, TPPs, Decentralization, Ecosystem). The workshop format was as follows:
- Step 1: Identify and articulate a key challenge related to the topic the group was addressing.
- Step 2: List relevant stakeholders and try to map them onto an interest vs influence matrix.
- Step 3: Specify a possible solution and next steps. The expectation here was not to come up with a final solution, but rather start thinking about what a solution might look like.
- In case of additional time, participants were invited to repeat the exercise with a different problem related to the topic.
Below are some of the notes captured from each of the four groups.
Breakout 1: Vision for ZK Chains
Read more here about the Elastic Chain & the vision driving it.
ZKsync is building the Elastic Chain. To do this, new protocol changes need to take place, an ecosystem of ZK Chains needs to be active, and each of those ZK Chains need to have flagship applications. The Token Assembly and the Foundation need to work together to bring this vision to reality by supporting early builders, established teams, and mature organizations. Relevant Link: Introducing the Elastic Chain
| A | Early Builders | Capitalized / Established Teams | Mature Organizations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protocol | Solo ZKsync Devs | Lambda Class | ML |
| Chain | ??? | GRVT, Sophon, Lens, Abstract, Era | n/a |
| App | ??? | Orb (using Lens) | AAVE, Uniswap, etc. |
What is the role of the ZKsync Foundation?
- The Foundation accelerates ecosystem bootstrapping and growth via strategic deals with established teams and mature organizations across the full vertical (Protocol, Chain, Apps).
How might the Token Assembly decrease the friction and costs of early and established teams? How might we increase their ability to perform?
- Proposed Solution: Solve for public infrastructure that all ZK Chains and Applications need, via subsidies or ecosystem-level MSA.
How might the Token Assembly help prevent extractive competition, especially for Chains and Apps, where resources are spent on a bidding war instead of growing the ecosystem?
- Proposed Solution: Create time-bound prizes to accelerate shipping and decrease space for long back-and-forth negotiations.
Breakout 2: TPP Success
How might the Token Assembly incentivize proposal writing process, while still getting high quality proposals? How could the Token Assembly address the risk of creating proposals?
- Proposed Solution from group: Decouple Proposal “R&D” from submission process to de-risk proposal creation. For example, via a 3-month TPP accelerator program with 10 teams. Token Assembly or ML could fund this, but closeness to ML is critical to exposure on technical development plans.
- Proposed solution from Gov Team: Create a TPP “prize” program for teams that come up with TPP examples or templates with varying levels of automation. Each example should explain when each template could/should be used.
Breakout 3: Decentralization
| Influence Today | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Low | High | ||
| Aligned Interests | High | ZK Chains | |
| Flagship Apps | |||
| Low | Competitors | Professional Delegates |
How might the Token Assembly ensure governance participation (and influence) of the people and organizations who are most impacted by ZKsync success?
- Proposed Solution 1: Create a ZK Chain delegation program, ensuring that ZK Chains have a meaningful influential voice. This program could mint tokens from Token Assembly, but instead of using them, assign voting power to ZK Chains. The voting power could also come from Foundation treasury. Open Question: What if a ZK Chain doesn’t have the resources or interest to participate in governance?
- Proposed Solution 2: Clearly articulate and showcase the importance of ZK Chain participation in governance.
- Note: It is unclear the motivation or willingness for ZK Chains to participate in governance. So there are actually two problems to be addressed here: one for voting power distribution to ZK Chains and another for ensuring ZK Chains have the resources and incentives to effectively participate.
Breakout 4: Ecosystem Collaboration
How might we increase the role clarity of the Token Assembly, ensuring its energy and resources are focused on impactful activities? How might we decrease the context gap between the Token Assembly and other teams like ZK Chains, Foundation, and developers?
- Proposed Solution: Publish a clear strategic plan, and transparent product roadmap that Token Assembly can rally around. Use the Governance Team as a channel to highlight missing context and remove confusion.
Other open questions:
- What are the top 3 things that need to be done before the end of the year?
- What is the exact technical developmental vision for ZKsync?
Meetup Outcomes & Takeaways
This workshop was extremely helpful for the ZKsync Governance Team as it helped us identify the following points which will help drive our work over the coming weeks and months:
- There is a need for further clarify on the different entities (Association vs. Foundation) and where they fit into the ZKsync ecosystem.
- There is a strong desire from Delegates to better understand the technical roadmap and vision in order to help align governance goals and initiatives.
- Delegates agree that getting ZK chains involved with governance is an important initiative for successful governance and we keen to explore ways to do so.
- To reduce the lift of launching a Token Program, Delegates feel it would be helpful to identify a few different models, tools and templates for TPPs. Creating a “TPP toolkit” including capped minter tooling (e.g. factory), lists of possible distribution mechanisms or technical partners, and models for admin multisigs of capped minters (for when they are necessary) would be make creating TPPs a lot easier.
- It would be helpful to have lists for:
- Technical partners (Delegates, service providers, etc.) to work with on TPPs for non-technical folks.
- Possible signers for committee multisigs that may need to be admins of CappedMinters for programs that require them.
- “Toolkit” for deploying a Token Program/mechanic (e.g. Capped Minter Factory) and how to use them.
- These type of in-person events are helpful for Delegates and the Gov Team should plan to coordinate more of them in the future.
Thank you to everyone who participated in person or added comments to the forum post! 
For those who attended, it was so great to meet all of you! @rafa and I hope to meet even more of you in the future!