Everyone following the ZIP-16 discussion needs to read @Golem ‘s response to @junkui.eth in this thread before voting. I’m linking it here because, in my view, it reveals more about Matter Labs’ priorities than any official announcement has.
After reading it carefully, I think the picture is clear.
For years, holders were told that the ZK token was on a path toward meaningful economic utility through protocol fees, burns and value accrual, LONG AGO through the paid propaganda on X, even before @gluk64 made his promise/draft in November 2025. That vision was repeatedly used to justify patience while the ecosystem matured.
Now Matter Labs is effectively telling us something very different.
Matter Labs’ commercial business earns revenue in FIAT through enterprise customers, managed services, licensing and Prividium.
Matter Labs also receives additional 67 million ZK every month from the token treasury to fund development and operations.
Meanwhile, the mechanisms that were expected to return economic value to token holders remain deferred, with no firm timeline or commitment beyond “future governance.”
Read those three points again.
Matter Labs earns FIAT.
Matter Labs receives ZK from the treasury.
Token holders continue waiting.
Based on Golem’s own explanation, Matter Labs currently receives both fiat revenue from enterprise customers and ongoing token funding from the treasury, while the mechanisms intended to create economic value for token holders remain without a concrete timeline. That is an asymmetry that deserves serious scrutiny.
If the original expectation was that token holders would eventually share in the network’s economic success through protocol utility and value accrual, Golem’s response raises the question of whether that expectation is still reflected in Matter Labs’ priorities.
The asymmetry is impossible to ignore..
The part that benefits Matter Labs has dates, contracts and monthly transfers.
The part that benefits token holders has ZERO promises and NO GURANTEE.
One side receives certainty.
The other side receives NOTHING but uncertainity and fake hope.
Golem argues that funding is aligned because TPP-18 is denominated in ZK rather than dollars.
But that misses the central concern.
A company cannot pay salaries, infrastructure, taxes and operating expenses with good intentions. Whether tokens are sold directly by Matter Labs or distributed as compensation and later sold, they ultimately become fiat to fund the business. At the same time, by Matter Labs’ own explanation, its enterprise business increasingly generates fiat revenue independently of the token’s market price.
That naturally raises an important question:
If enterprise customers are already paying Matter Labs in fiat, why does the company also require continued monthly funding from the token treasury while the value-accrual mechanisms for holders remain delayed?
Another question:
Why is the treasury transfer to Matter Labs guaranteed, while the transfer of value back to token holders has no comparable commitment or timeline?
And perhaps the most important one:
If interoperability fees and token utility were presented as central to the original vision for v31, why were those elements deprioritized while treasury funding continued unchanged?
This is no longer just a debate about engineering priorities.
It is a debate about incentives.
Good governance aligns incentives.
Today, the incentive structure appears uneven: the company’s funding is concrete and recurring, while the token’s economic roadmap remains uncertain.
That is why confidence has deteriorated.
That is why so many holders are asking harder questions.
If the original Interop Bundles vision—including the token utility that many holders expected—was an important part of the proposal, then ask yourself one question before you vote:
What leverage will token holders have to secure those commitments after this rescoped version has already been approved?
Voting No does not necessarily mean rejecting progress. It can also mean asking Matter Labs to return with a proposal that restores the missing economic components or provides clear, concrete commitments about when and how they will be delivered.
If those mechanisms are truly important to the long-term value of the network, then they should be important enough to define before, not after, governance approves a fundamentally rescoped v31.