I don’t think the proposal’s goal and KPIs are clear enough. The delegates’ questions are not being addressed properly, and there is no clear model explaining where the 300M zk figure comes from. Additionally, the 25M zk cost (with 12.5M for discretionary use) is very high.
Here’s what I propose:
Add 2/3 delegates to the DSC.
Define clear and unambiguous metrics before this begins. I don’t want a dashboard to track progress later; I want a dashboard with predefined metrics from the start.
Remove the 12.5M discretionary fund and reserve it for a future vote if needed and if governance deems it appropriate.
Only comment I would have is that it would be great it ZK had RFPs for further selection of teams that executed these very large proposals. This builds legitimacy
They ignore questions from small delegates, pretending they don’t exist, but they responded to questions from major delegates, such as @L2BEAT. It feels as if the proposal has already been accepted, and the voting is a mere formality.
Additionally, this proposal has already been supported by delegate @404Gov , who received votes from the Dragonfly fund using tokens that should be locked. On this topic, a user published a brief investigation on Discord, which appears quite credible
At Tevaera, we’re dedicated to being a strong community voice, promoting fair and transparent decision-making to advance the ZKsync network. With over 26M ZK in voting power, we’re pleased to support ZKNation’s first proposal, the ZKSync Ignite Program, which aims to establish a robust liquidity hub to enhance ZKsync’s DeFi total value locked (TVL) and accessibility.
7 Reasons for Tevaera’s Support of this Proposal:
1. Unified Liquidity: We love the idea of making Era the central liquidity hub to power the Elastic Chain network. The 300M ZK incentives will drive significant activity over the next 9 months, attracting new users and developers to ZKsync.
2. Transparent Rewards: Instead of vague “future” airdrops, ZK Nation is focusing on structured, transparent rewards, a clear improvement.
3. Clear Success Measures: Increase DeFi liquidity by $5-$10 per $1 in incentives, aiming for $205M-$410M over nine months. Success metrics include maximum 5bps slippage on $1M stable-stable trades, 35bps for $100K stable-volatile trades, and generating $120M in fees for liquidity providers, with a retention goal of $0.60 for every $1 of liquidity growth post-incentives.
4. Meaningful Engagement: Forum discussions have shown high-quality feedback, with the Ignite proposal team promptly addressing issues and opportunities.
5. Ecosystem Growth: This initiative will benefit all projects in the ecosystem by strengthening liquidity and is likely to drive new user traffic to native dApps on ZKsync.
6. User-Centric Approach: The Ignite website streamlines access, allowing users to view incentives, provide liquidity, and check rewards every 8 hours, with weekly claiming options
7. Good Timing: With the expansion of the Elastic Chain network through the addition of new ZK chains, these incentives provide a solid foundation and build strong momentum.
Feedback/Improvement Opportunities: This is a strong, well-thought-out proposal. Much of our feedback around program automation, KYC etc. was echoed by other delegates and addressed by the proposal team. We’re supportive and will provide more feedback as results from the first season come in.
For now, we have two recommendations for consideration:
a.) Implement real-time reward claims instead of weekly options to boost on-chain transactions, offer flexible claim times, reduce “potential” simultaneous sell pressure, and give users greater control over their rewards.
b.) Develop a clear, long-term plan to maintain liquidity momentum beyond the Ignite incentives, focusing on meeting the retention goal of $0.60 for every $1 of liquidity growth. That’s it for now. We’ll continue to share our decision rationale transparently with the ZK community for all future proposals.
I don’t think the proposal’s goal and KPIs are clear enough. The delegates’ questions are not being addressed properly, and there is no clear model explaining where the 300M zk figure comes from. Additionally, the 25M zk cost (with 12.5M for discretionary use) is very high.
1. Proposal’s goal & KPI’s:
2. KPI’s Explained in-depth:
3. Where does 300M ZK figure come from?
This was explained on both the public X Spaces + Public Delegate discussion
It was chosen by working backwards from the amount of DeFi TVL KPI ($205MM-410MM) and factoring in learnings from previous DeFi programs, where it can be expected to receive between $5-$10 increase in DeFi TVL per $1 spent. In this case, you take the 30 day moving average price of $ZK (e.g. say it’s $0.1250), multiply it by 300M tokens, = $37.5M USD; then multiply it by 5 = $187.5m, and multiply it by 10, = 370.5m; and you get in the range of the DeFi TVL increase (187.5 - 370.5) you can estimate based on utilizing 300M ZK for the program rewards.
They said this was not the only reason why they chose 300m ZK in incentives, but it was a big reason behind their decision
4. The 25M ZK administration budget (and 12.5m ZK discretionary fund) is too high, remove it
The 25M ZK is broken up into many different categories for the successful running of the program over 9 months, you can view the complete breakdown HERE
Now that we’ve broken down the expenses, you said that the 12.12M ZK discretionary fund should be removed. Note: it is 12,120,000 ZK (max spend, not necessarily they will spend all of that), which, at $.13 is $1,575,600 USD. Certainly a large number but not $12.5m USD as you said in your post.
If that is removed, that means you want to REMOVE: all marketing for the program, Gas Stipend (making everyone’s gas txns free for Ignite), 3rd Party Auditor (to protect community), Automation budget (to make better for community in future proposals), KPI bonuses for DeFi protocols (if they work super hard to make the program a success), & any discretionary funds (in case something goes wrong and or something needs to be upgraded immediately without time for a vote to approve the spending + as a buffer for new teams to offer services for Ignite)
Personally I think that it would be very shortsighted and not in the best interests of the community to remove these important functions and services
5. Add 2/3 Delegates to DSC
Michael Lewellen, OpenZeppelin is on DSC, is a delegate with 12.45M votes
Lindsey Winder, Hedgey Finance is on DSC, is a delegate with 10.2M votes
I think I’ve gone ahead and answered all of your questions, giving important context from the proposal and from what was said in the public answers.
My questions for you:
Do you still believe the proposal goal & KPIs are not good enough? If yes, what type of additional clarity are you looking for?
Do you understand now the logic behind where 300M ZK for rewards came from?
Do you think 12.12M ZK for all of those areas is still too much and should be removed completely?
Do you see that 2/5 DSC members are high ranking delegates?
Hey! Thanks for all the work you’ve put into this proposal—it’s clear a lot of thought went into it. That said, there are a few things we think need addressing before moving forward:
What’s the plan after it ends? We’ve seen with Arbitrum and Optimism that activity spikes during incentive programs, then drops off afterward. It’d be great to have a strategy for keeping users engaged once this wraps up.
Tracking what works: We need a solid way to analyze the program as it runs, so we know we’re putting funds into the right areas. If things aren’t going as planned, it’d be helpful to make adjustments along the way.
Identifying real users: Bots can skew the results, so we’ll need a way to spot and focus on genuine user engagement.
Avoiding farm and dump: We’ve seen users farm rewards just to dump them, which can hurt token value. Having more specific KPIs and maybe starting with a 3-month pilot could help us refine what works and avoid some of those pitfalls.
So, for now, we’re voting against this proposal, but we’d love to see these points addressed for a stronger program!
Answers to your questions below. Did you read the proposal? Every one of your questions is answered in the proposal:
Identifying and rewarding real users while punishing & disincentivizing bad actors is one of the primary responsibilities of OpenBlock Labs, the analytics manager of the program.
Are the current KPI’s not specific enough? Please provide examples of specific KPIs you would like to see. OBL has stated on the public calls that they are looking into ways of enticing users to not simply farm & dump but rather to farm & continue farming with their rewards. In my opinion, if the program makes it more worthwhile for users to farm > dump then that’s what they will do.
I have a hard time understanding what your main concerns are, considering that all of the topics have been addressed in the proposal and during the public forums (in Q&As, spaces, and open delegates calls).
To clarify, my main intent was to emphasize how crucial these points are for building community confidence and setting the program up for long-term success. However, considering the 9-month duration and 325M ZK token allocation, I’m concerned that this is a significant commitment without a prior trial phase. Running a pilot program first could allow us to see if everything works as intended based on the specifics laid out in the proposal. This would give us the chance to adjust and review the program as needed to ensure it’s optimized before fully scaling up.
Ok I understand where you are coming from. It is definitely a valid concern. It is a large program, however, i believe the program is written in a way that anticipates this concern and is setup to fight against this via 2 main ways:
The DSC has the authority to cancel the program at the end of each Season if things are not going well. Since tokens are minted & used on an “as-needed” basis, then if the program is cancelled after season 1, (3 months in), then at most 1/3rd of the 325M tokens will be used and the rest will remain unminted & untouched.
The Token Assembly has the authority to cancel the program at ANY time. 1 month into the program, if it looks like a sh*tshow then anyone can propose the program be cancelled and boom, if the Token Assembly approves the cancellation, the program is over.
Utilizing the rapid iteration cycle of 2-week increments + the need for the DSC to decide whether to continue or cancel the program every 3 months, based on analytical data I think settles all of your concerns. This ensures that you can view the 1st season as the “pilot” portion of the program. If it’s bad it will be cancelled.
Why not just set it for 3 months, then if it’s good, do another proposal to continue? It’s really simple. Doing that would destroy all of the momentum of the program. If 3 months goes by and everything is great, if it’s done your way, then you would need to write another proposal + put it onchain for a vote.
This at the very least would take 15 days to do and most likely take 3-4 weeks to do. Plus everything would need to be restarted. This means all the positive momentum and hype for the program would die and need to be restarted after the 2nd governance proposal passes.
This seems like an incredible waste of attention and opportunity. I understand the concern you have, but checks & balances have been built in to prevent the running of a bad program; while also capturing all the upside if things go great.
What do you mean? They clearly said at the beginning that they would group all of the common questions together and post large Q&As answering similar theme’d questions.
You can view this to see the common questions that are all grouped together:
Onto your final point:
Did you know that across all governance systems in the space locked tokens can be delegated to different delegates and used for voting? This is how DAOs work in crypto, it works like that on Arbitrum, Optimism, and ZKsync. Locked tokens means that tokens cannot be sold. It doesn’t mean they can’t be delegated and used for voting. I don’t understand the problem here?
Bootstrapping a $45 mm GTM strategy is not an amateur endeavor. The expertise that assembled this team, structured this proposal, and sought validation from a month-old DAO is well organized. The proposers’ attitude towards delegate feedback is nothing short of professional.
Traditionally a deal ticket of this size would have some degree of due diligence inquiry. TPP #1 was tabled on October 17th and the Token Assembly has less than three weeks to deliberate, decide and deploy this budget. As a potential delegate to this Token Assembly, I seek the following information as a public good-
1: Is audit history a prerequisite? If so, will all protocols that participate in TPP-1 have their audit history reviewed by OBL and approved by the DSC?
“This guidance below comes from 1) past programs that OpenBlock Labs has driven, and 2) current state of the ZKsync Era DeFi ecosystem.”
2: Under the current state of the ZKsync Era Defi ecosystem, how many protocols pre-qualify under the criteria of ‘1 mm TVL’ and ‘live on mainnet’? Can you provide a list ?
“Fully cooperate and integrate relevant APIs, data streams, and platforms with the program providers: OpenBlock Labs & Merkl”
3: If a $1 mm TVL protocol started today, how long would it take for them to audit their smart contracts and go live on the ZKSync Era mainnet?
3.1 Once live, how long does it take for the protocols to fully integrate the relevant APIs, data streams, and platforms with the program providers?
Allocation Strategy
Instrument Selection
“Rewards will be applied to pools that align with the program’s goals and demonstrate meaningful results to the program’s key metrics. This includes:
Blue-Chip Asset Pools: Pools involving major assets like ETH, ZK, USDC, WETH and WBTC.
Strategic Trading Pairs: Key pairs such as ZK/ETH, ETH/USDC, ZK/USDC, and wsETH/ETH.
ZKsync-Native Asset Pools: Pools that support tokens native to the ZKsync ecosystem.
Nascent Asset Pools: Pools that support assets that show nascent demand and can offer unique differentiation to other ecosystems such as RWAs”
1: Could you share a simple percentage breakdown of nominal allocations to each of these asset classes?
1.2: Are there caps to any of these position sizes?
“Nascent Asset Pools: Pools that support assets that show nascent demand and can offer unique differentiation to other ecosystems such as RWAs”
2: Could you describe such potential assets in a function of
Market cap
Liquidity requirements (volume and minimum length of trading history)
Historical (reliability of price data)
Rebalancing
“Earlier experiments which have the least amount of backtesting will also distribute the least amount of incentives. As a result, we suspect the first season to index more on information gathering and for the program’s allocation to likely be back-weighted”
1: Might we not end up creating a moat around the program’s earliest participants by following this mandate (i.e. more time=more backtesting=higher confidence=larger allocations)?
1.2 Wouldn’t that disincentivize the participation of new protocols in a market where they have to compete with a $43 mm incentive subsidy pool for user attention and acquisition?
Oversight
“The DSC’s discretion is limited by its corporate documents and its members are subject to binding legal agreements entered into with the DSC.”
This is a $45 mm proposal, and DSC is the sole fiduciary trusted to oversee this distribution.
1: What are these documented limitations on the discretion of DSC ?
1.1: Who drafted these contracts?
DSC Accountability: The multisig that has permission to mint and distribute any funds for the program have 6/8 signers from both the DSC and the Security Council. Each transaction requires at least one Security Council member to sign”.
2: Since Micheal Lewellin (Open Zeppelin) is both a DSC member and a Security Council member, does he get 2 votes?
2.1: Who are the 3 SC members? Will they get voted in by the Token Assembly?
Review eligible DeFi apps/protocols from the program, exercising veto as needed
3: When OBL recommends a pre-qualified ($1 mm, contract audited, mainnet live) protocol for review at the end of each month, what are the covenants that might trigger a veto rejection?
Marketing
“The DSC has an agency in mind to help operationalize this strategy which will include:
Partner marketing: This will likely be the most effective marketing tactic. We plan to include both direct beneficiaries (protocols chosen by the DSC) and indirect beneficiaries (projects not selected but still benefit from attention) will regularly participate in co-marketing campaigns. This could include onchain campaigns, leveraging popular games or communities, contests, and other methods this chosen agency has experience with.
Distribution launch partners: Collaborate with strategic partners like wallets, exchanges, or bridges to raise awareness to their audiences (similar to JumperExchange’s involvement with SuperFest)
Direct Paid Marketing (via newsletters, podcasts, and crypto media channels)
UGC Campaign: We will likely execute a user-generated-content campaign for DeFi/crypto content creators.
Twitter/Telegram: We plan to use the existing Twitter and Telegram community to continually communicate updates and opportunities, and create a place for participants to share and learn together. These channels will be moderated.”
1: Could you provide a nominal breakdown of how $100 would be split between these categories?
“Engage third party vendors, if needed, for limited marketing and audit duties”
2: Who will own and drove the strategy and direction of such marketing agency relations? Will that be DSC ?
“Our target is to increase DeFi liquidity by $5 - $10 for every $1 of incentive allocated (measured both in absolute and relative ETH terms) This roughly translates to increasing DeFi liquidity by $205MM-$410MM over 9 months.”
1: Are these token unlocks (worth nearly $140 mm) factored in to these final TVL projections of $205MM-$410MM ?
Slippage amongst key pairs
“Our target is to improve price execution to achieve:
Maximum of 5bps slippage up to $1M trades on stable-stable pairs
Maximum of 35bps slippage up to $100K trades, and maximum of 120bps slippage up to $1M trades on key stable-volatile pairs (e.g. ETH-USDC)”
1: From September 2025 there’s a linear unlock of nearly 173 mm $ZK every month till June 2028. Once we stop incentivizing demand, what slippage rates are expected for this consistent supply ?
Organic fees
“On the demand side, our target is to generate $3 in fees for liquidity providers for every $1 incentive allocated, or roughly ~$120MM in LP fees generated over 9 months”
1: What happens to LP fees at the end of Season 3 when the ZK Ignite tap turns off? How will these protocols survive such an incentive driven spike in block space demand after Season 3?
Compliance
There have been questions from delegates asking about any potential of conflict risks regarding the DSC and vendors. We want to clarify that no members of the DSC or 3P vendors (OpenBlock Labs, Merkel, etc) have a conflict of interest with any potential DeFi app/protocol that may apply to the program. This was specifically kept in mind while selecting potential members of the DSC and the program service providers.
1: Does any members of the DSC share investors/investments?
1.2: If a Defi protocol that applies to the Zk IGnite program share investors/investments with members of the DSC, will such members disclaim such conflict of interest and abstain from voting?
“Third Party Audit: The DSC has the authority to spend up to 1,500,000 ZK tokens across the full length of the program (9 months) to hire a third party auditor to review the results of the program at the end of every season.”
1: Since this cost has already been budgeted, does the DSC commit to a mandatory audit at the end of Season 3?
The DSC or Token Assembly can cancel the program at any time.
1: If there are public, credible allegations of favoritism, asset inflation, or collusion by DSC, do the proposers consent to a 3rd party audit by a vendor of the Assembly’s choice?
Disclaimer:
This submission was prepared from readings of all versions the ZK Ignite proposal, feedback statements, and publicly sourced information. I possess no privileged investigation, nor claim any qualified opinion for any of the assumptions, whether literal or inferred in the body of text above. I am an independent contributor.
First of all thank you for the in-depth answer. I know you did not directly pick up my post (which refers to similar topics) but I would still like to answer these question and share my thoughts:
First question:
I would still love to see a clear goal for season 1 and season 2 that if it’s not met would automatically cancel the following seasons.
Second question:
I did not know that, so thank you for highlighting that.
I still believe there is a difference between 2 people of the DSC also being delegates and the Token Assembly sending 2 additional delegates. Disclaimer: I don’t know Michael Lewellen, I don’t know Lindsey Winder, so this is not about them, but more a very general remark.
I think there are arguments both wrt to the process and the structure.
The members of the DSC were picked as industry/ defi experts (quote not verbatim, but mentioned in the twitter space IIRC) and we have no clue about the process, who picked them, based on which requirements etc.
Delegates being sent by the Assembly would be voted on and their mandate (at least from my point of view) would be to question especially criticial decisions in terms of ZK spending (so y/n for e.g. season 2 and 3, but also the 12M ZK that are e.g. marketing and a “buffer” for now)
Michael Lewellen, OpenZeppelin is on DSC, is a delegate with 12.45M votes,
Lindsey Winder, Hedgey Finance is on DSC, is a delegate with 10.2M votes
Again: I don’t know either of them, so I can’t judge them. It’s actually the other way around, I am happy two delegates are already part of the DSC. That doesn’t change my position though.
We should add one or two delegates that we vet, vote on and send to the DSC as our representative with the goal to increase transparency, check especially critical decisions and learn for future programs.
Hi Benido! Thank you for your kind words and also thank you for your ongoing diligence as a ZKsync Delegate, it’s because of great people like you that I’m so bullish on the future of ZKsync.
My apologies for not picking up your post in particular, I saw some common questions being asked and did my best to reply to them, I’d like to help answer any lingering questions to the best of my abilities before the vote officially starts next week.
Ok so seeing as the main goal of this program is to increase DeFi TVL, we can use that as a good barometer for at least the 1st season of the program. In the proposal it is noted that if the goal is missed by a margin greater than 25%, then the program will be cancelled. As stated below:
Since DeFi TVL is the main goal, we can look to what was said to accurately measure this:
Over 9 months, 3x 3-month seasons, the goal is to increase DeFi TVL by 205m-410m+; this roughly translates to an increase in DeFi TVL by roughly: 68.33m USD - 136.6m USD within the first season.
Using the reasoning above we can infer that if DeFi TVL does not increase by at least 51.25m USD (75% of lower goal) then the program can be considered a failure and should be cancelled immediately upon the conclusion of the 1st Season.
What do you think about that logic? Of course, there are other things being measured, but since DeFi TVL is the most important metric, if that is missed, then the program should be cancelled and re-evaluated as to what went wrong.
Regarding your 2nd question, to be completely honest with you, I agree that we should have more delegate representation in future TPP / governance proposals, and I would love for essentially a list of pre-vetted, legit, delegates/ZKsync community members to be created that can serve on future Councils to overview future proposals.
This is something that would be super beneficial to the ecosystem as a whole, if we had a list of say, 20-30+ people with differing specialties and knowledge that can be relied upon to be a part of future councils for future governance proposals.
In the case with Ignite however there’s a few things to point out.
Time is a limiting factor here, this is why this proposal was created with the main service providers (OBL + Merkl) already locked-in from the onset, as well as the DSC members already being pre-selected. (NOTE: anyone can be replaced if they are not doing a good job, this is more so that the program can start with a very strong and structured foundation to hit the ground running.
Taking learnings from STIP & LTIPP from Arbitrum, this program more closely resembles the LTIPP which also had also pre-selected their council members & service providers before the program started, unlike the STIP that required a vote for every facet which lead to a lot of congestion and confusion. There is also a popularity contest element that would ideally be avoided over ensuring that capable people are in the roles assigned.
Since this is the 1st proposal, personally I think that it is important to ensure that you get very high quality, capable people that are aligned with ZKsync first and foremost, even if you are sacrificing the decentralized nature a bit by pre-selecting people. I think that as the 1st proposal it is ok to let this slide, with a goal of more community involvement (alluding to the list of qualified council members I mentioned earlier) getting established so that in the future, we can ensure that any new proposal will have a good pool of potential council members to pick from.
You need to make sure that there are no conflicts of interest. Since this program is so big and spreading across many different sectors that will benefit from it, no one on the DSC can have a direct connection to DeFi on ZKsync Era. If you look at a list of our top delegates this cuts out a lot of people from consideration unfortunately. You also have to consider that it needs to be someone with a lot of knowledge, no conflicts of interest, loves and is aligned with ZKsync & the community, and also has the time to devote to being on the council. This is not an easy set of requirements to satisfy.
As per the people selected, I can help shed some light on them:
Lindsey Winder (co-founder of Hedgey Finance) is well known in the space with a great reputation. He was a part of the signers for the STIP (and LTIPP?) and has a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to governance + DeFi since his company is directly involved with token vesting, etc.
Michael Lewellen (head of solutions architecture @ OpenZeppelin) is one of the top security experts in the space. I mean, OZ is probably the top security firm in the space; Michael has a lot of experience reviewing code, contracts, etc, as well as being part of various DAOs, etc. OpenZeppelin is a part of the ZKsync security council and cares very much about the integrity of the ecosystem.
Kerman Kohli - I don’t know very well but he is highly regarded in the space and also was heavily involved with Arbitrum DAO and just DAOs in general in the space. His company, 0xARC, created the og DeFi passport too so he has a lot of knowledge + experience w/ DAOs and DeFi. He really cares about DAOs and governance and is very aligned with the ZK Credo.
Ashwath Balakrishnan - Also don’t know him too well but he is the head consultant for Delphi Digitial, so I would wager he has the most experience of most people in the space when it comes to DeFi in general and he would be able to help guide Ignite in a positive direction.
Karthik Senthil - last but certainly not least, Karthik is the Head of ZKsync Era from Matter Labs. He can essentially be considered the CEO of ZKsync Era and everything he has done since he got into this position has been in service of Era + the community. If anyone is a ZKsync Era fan/community member you can see the BIG changes across the chain from vibe to new teams/projects joining, etc, that has happened since about August of this year. Consequently late July is when Karthik took up this position. He lives and breathes ZKsync Era so I think it’s great to have him on the DSC.
Personally, I think the current list of DSC members is great.
With that being said, I agree that in the future, we should establish a list of qualified people that can serve on future councils for future proposals. I hope that this proposal sets a precent of always having a highly skilled, competent, and unbiased council that oversees future proposals to ensure that things always go in a positive direction for the ZKsync community.
Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like to discuss or if this didn’t really satisfy your questions.
We’ve been building on ZKsync for over two years, and our insights come from both experience and a deep commitment to the ecosystem. Our goal in participating in this voting system is to lay solid foundations that will bring long-lasting value to the collective future of our ecosystem. We understand that complex challenges rarely have black-and-white answers — there are many nuances in between. This proposal shows us that there is no perfect solution but at the same time the need for action is evident. At the same time, we have been following discussions from the time when first draft was launched, and seems a lot of thought has been put into it.
We recognize the importance of establishing a liquidity hub to support builders and users, and the Ignite Program certainly sets the groundwork for users, a more connected and thriving DeFi ecosystem. However, we have reservations about certain aspects, such as the min $1 million TVL and DSC not being corrupted.
1 mil which may unintentionally favor already well-funded projects, presenting potential conflicts of interest
DSC having a lot of power, and preventing conflict of interest in case DSC members have interest or alliances with projects
The past two weeks gave a lot of clarity, answered on these questions and showed that certainly that in the future we can have new proposals which can bring us back on this topic, change the directive if we see its not going as planned etc.
Despite these concerns, we acknowledge that liquidity is critical, and in the broader context, this program offers significant value to the ecosystem.
Our inclination is to support the Ignite Program as it provides a solid framework for boosting participation and enhancing liquidity, which are crucial at this growth stage. We are also aware of the potential consequences coming with it.
While 325 million ZK tokens is a substantial allocation and not a naive one, we need to be proactive in building truly decentralized systems. It’s encouraging to see healthy community discussions, but it’s equally important to act swiftly and decisively.
Our takeaway from this experience is that future proposals should strive for simplicity, allowing the community adequate time to understand and respond, especially when multiple decisions are combined into a single proposal — a structure that can often act as a trigger for confusion or debate.
We appreciate the team’s responsiveness to feedback and the transparency they have provided. This open approach is what truly matters to us.
That said, as @lex_node pointed out, there is still work to do in creating lasting tokenomics value and governance mechanisms. We expect some market turbulence, including significant sell-offs, but remain confident that moving forward with this proposal is a step in the right direction that will ultimately drive meaningful progress.
Weekly rewards are cool for keeping people engaged, but switching to every two weeks or every month might save on gas and could get users to stick around longer with their liquidity. It’d also give the team more breathing room to tweak which pools get incentives as the DeFi market changes. Curious to hear what everyone thinks
Hi Golem,
thank you for your detailed response and thoughts. I really appreciate it!
Let me quickly respond to the imo most important parts:
Ok so seeing as the main goal of this program is to increase DeFi TVL, we can use that as a good barometer for at least the 1st season of the program. In the proposal it is noted that if the goal is missed by a margin greater than 25%, then the program will be cancelled.
I am completely fine with that. I guess most if not all other goals/ KPIs mentioned are somehow connected to TVL and TVL is the highest KPI in that pyramid.
I am not a native speaker, so maybe my interpretation is off here, but since the proposal states that “The program may be cancelled at the discretion of the DSC […]” it’s not automatic, but optional. If we all agree that this “may” is actually a “should”, then I we are likely as close to automation as we can get with this first proposal.
I agree that we should have more delegate representation in future TPP / governance proposals, and I would love for essentially a list of pre-vetted, legit, delegates/ZKsync community members to be created that can serve on future Councils to overview future proposals.
[…]
I hope that this proposal sets a precent of always having a highly skilled, competent, and unbiased council that oversees future proposals to ensure that things always go in a positive direction for the ZKsync community.
I completely understand the issue with timing here.
I also acknowledge that it would be hard to find trusted delegates, at least for me, because I don’t (really) know the five listed DSC members, but the same applies for all other delegates here. We probably could nominate someone, but it will be hard to really evaluate people based on just a few posts here.
So for the conclusion is the following:
I am okay with a more pragmatic approach this time if we all agree on canceling season 2 and 3 if TVL is 25% below goal.
I hope we can find a more decentralized approach with more Token Assembly involvement for future proposals. This best case includes the list of 20+ delegates (tbd how we can make that happen), but also explicitly an earlier start for new proposals. I think there were rumors about more proposals already in the works. @rafa@theshelb If you are aware of other proposals, could you try to reach out so we can get delegate input earlier?
tl;dr: I am okay with taking a pragmatic approach here, but for future proposals the bar would be higher and I hope the values zksync shared won’t be aspirational forever.
Overall, this proposal is well-designed, establishing a stronger liquidity foundation for ZKsync in 2025 and supporting healthy DeFi ecosystem growth through incentives.
ZK Points:
Building a Liquidity Hub: The proposal’s phased release of 325 million ZK tokens to build a liquidity hub can enhance ZKsync’s competitiveness in the DeFi sector, especially by increasing total value locked (TVL) and reducing trading slippage. This should make the platform more attractive in the long term.
Phased Monitoring: The bi-weekly evaluations and quarterly reviews allow for greater flexibility in the early stages, enabling responsive adjustments based on market and community feedback, thus optimizing incentive distribution and improving efficiency.
Setting KPIs: The clear establishment of key performance indicators (KPIs), such as liquidity growth and price execution, is crucial for achieving the desired impact. However, it would be beneficial to clarify the dynamic adjustment mechanisms in place for handling market volatility.
Suggestions:
Enhance Transparency: To increase community trust, consider making more real-time data available, such as a public dashboard showing liquidity and reward distribution details.
Introduce Long-Term Incentives: Avoid short-term speculative behavior by implementing incentives for long-term liquidity providers. Rewards for those with extended holding periods could help retain “sticky capital” on ZKsync.
Dual KPI System: Establish both short-term (TVL growth and user engagement) and long-term (user retention and capital utilization) KPIs. This approach would allow real-time project impact assessment while guiding future strategy adjustments.
Increase Community Involvement: Consider allowing the community to score quarterly KPI results. These scores could inform adjustments to the incentive program, fostering stronger governance involvement.
Summary: This proposal is thorough in terms of detail and execution. Maintaining sufficient transparency and flexibility will significantly advance ZKsync’s DeFi ecosystem.
Please excuse if this has already been answered in this forum.
I would like to know the selection criteria for OpenBlock Labs (“OBL”).
Who proposed them as the Analytics Manager?
Was there a vote or they are appointed by ZK Sync Foundation?
