When we open the ZKsync official website and various early promotional materials, we see this sentence:
“$ZK is the native gas token for ZKsync Gateway, the settlement layer of the ZKsync network. Gateway is where transactions across all chains and Prividium zones are coordinated and bundled before being posted to Ethereum L1 for final settlement.”This statement was the very foundation for $ZK’s existence. Now, years after the token’s launch, and after it has fallen more than 90%, even this last remaining basis no longer exists.The team uses “developing clients” as the reason to claim millions of dollars worth of $ZK tokens every month. Yet the clients they acquire are not settling on ZKsync Gateway.So what is the meaning of customers obtained by selling $ZK tokens? And for the institutional clients acquired using $ZK as funding, when they use ZKsync, will it generate any revenue? If there is revenue, does it belong to $ZK, or to someone else?All of this is increasingly looking like a scam that is accelerating toward collapse.
All along, whenever proposals to claim tokens occur, there always seem to be perfectly timed inspiring statements and news. When larger claims are needed, they pass with astonishing speed. For proposals that are unfavorable to the community, there are always interesting answers and explanations.This is the first time I’ve spoken up in years, and I am a loyal $ZK holder. After calming down and carefully thinking about everything that has happened, the answer is already there — we just didn’t want to believe it, and kept holding on to hope.Finally, I want to ask: What is the actual role of the $ZK token in ZKsync today?ZKsync is pivoting to attract institutional users, yet these institutional users and the development team itself do not need $ZK. So where is the meaning of $ZK?
After everything that has happened, let’s call this what it actually is: a blatant betrayal and a coordinated rug-pull of the community’s trust. Matter Labs has finally stripped away the corporate marketing jargon to expose a dark plan that leaves $ZK token holders holding nothing but dust.
Look at how they played us. Just last month, they convinced us to vote yes on handing 67 million tokens monthly to Matter Labs. They sold us on the grand “Prividium vision.” They told us that giving away these tokens would secure massive institutional partners, drive wide adoption, and that we, the investors, would finally benefit from massive interoperability fees.
It was all a lie to secure their own funding. Look closely at ZIP-16 (v31 Upgrade) that they are trying to quietly ram through right now. They have completely moved the goalposts. In the upgrade rationale, they explicitly state that the Gateway architecture—the very thing meant to bring value to $ZK—is basically being shoved aside because it “requires additional coordination.”
Let that sink in. They took our 67 million tokens a month for Prividium, and the very next second, they design an upgrade that ensures these institutional partners don’t even need to touch or look at the $ZK token. They got their funding, and they completely cut us out of the revenue loop.
As @junkui.eth pointed out, the team is dumping millions of dollars worth of $ZK tokens monthly under the guise of “developing clients.” But those clients are bypassing the token entirely.
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The Team, VCs, and Institutional Partners (from which only the Matter Labs company and its shareholders will benefit) get the biggest slice of the pie, favorable roadmap changes, massive token grants, and all the upside.
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The Token Holders—the ones who took the actual financial risk, injected real capital, and sustained this ecosystem through a 90% drop—are treated as nothing more than exit liquidity.
We did not receive free tokens. We paid for them. We took the risk based on the whitepapers and promises Matter Labs provided. To treat the community as vital when you need our capital, volume, and votes, only to cast us aside and rewrite the protocol once you have your monthly token allocation, is predatory.
This is a call to action for every single member of ZK Nation. We absolutely cannot let ZIP-16 pass. Do not let them get away with this blatant power grab. We need to blow this up immediately: raise maximum awareness, blast the truth across X and every single social media platform, and expose this dark plan. Check your governance power right now—either demand accountability from your current delegates, revoke them if they back this betrayal, or delegate your votes to yourself. Take control of your tokens and vote NO! We want the original ZIP-16 with the long promised INTEROP FEES, this is our last chance with the hope to compensate our massive losses, otherwise ZK token price would go to ZERO.
They are hoping we’ll just stay quiet and let the vote pass with astonishing speed like they always do. Do not let them. This is our line in the sand. They destroyed us for the sake of their institutional partners after bleeding our treasury.
Reject ZIP-16 in their ugly greedy form. Organize, vote NO, and revolt against this upgrade. We must demand absolute honesty and a return to the original utility, or we must completely withdraw our liquidity and collapse their system. Stop hiding behind “governance” theater. The community built this network, and we have the power to vote down v31 and take our power back!
Its pointless to vote against v31. Months of development will just be rejected. No one will benefit from it. But as I understand governance can start proposal to cancel TPP-18 funding. Cause situation changed and there is no fee mechanism for ZK its would be a fair deal.
In ny opinion, it is not piontless, we will force them to return the original zip-16 WITH INTEROP FEES AND it is a great idea to work on cancelling the tpp-18. i totally agree with you in that point.
Decentralization is just a false game. Do you really think you can overturn all this? The answer can already be seen from the vote of the 18 proposal.
I think it is still possible to change the outcome. In my view, Alex may not have had enough voting power to pass TPP-18 originally, which is why the staking mechanism with mandatory delegation was introduced to create the additional voting power needed to secure the extra 400 million votes.
Season 2 was then “postponed” until an unknown date, and most stakers left their tokens staked. Even those who unstaked were not automatically undelegated — an additional step was required. This meant many holders may not have realized that their voting power was still delegated. When connecting these events — the staking program with mandatory delegation, the additional voting power it created, and the postponement of Season 2 — it raises serious concerns about how governance power was accumulated and maintained.
Another important point is that TPP-18 was a very different situation. Many voters supported it because they believed the Prividium vision would eventually create value for ZK holders. The expectation was that institutional adoption would lead to stronger network usage, interoperability growth, licensing revenue, fee generation, and potentially mechanisms such as buybacks or burns that would benefit the token.
In other words, many voters were not simply voting to give away tokens — they were voting based on the belief that this investment would ultimately create value for the entire ZK ecosystem and token holders.
The current v31 proposal is different. If the architecture moves forward without interop fee mechanism or meaningful value capture for the ZK token, then the original economic expectation behind many previous votes changes completely. This is why the community should carefully reconsider whether this is the direction they actually intended to support.
We need to reject this deformed version of v31 and send a clear message through governance. The goal is not to stop progress — the goal is to force a return to a version that includes the originally promised interop fee mechanism.
Interop fees would benefit all ZK token holders by creating real value accrual for the token. Without this, many holders are left asking what the long-term purpose of holding ZK actually is. A token without meaningful utility and value capture risks becoming worthless, while the company and shareholders are protected from the downside.
Many of us have already suffered significant losses, and there is little left to lose by demanding a better outcome. If governance has any meaning, now is the moment for holders to use their votes and reject a proposal that no longer represents the value proposition many of us originally supported.