Hi everyone,
After publishing the above post on the forum, I wanted to provide an update on the work the Foundation has been doing and on our proposal pipeline plan.
Foundation work so far
The ZKsync Foundation spearheaded ecosystem growth since TGE with key strategic & institutional partnerships:
- Strategic Partnerships: Lens, Abstract, Sophon, ZKCandy, XPLA, XSolla, Ripio’s La Chain, Wonder from WonderFi (which was recently acquired by Robinhood), Union from Coins, Coinhacko and Indodax
- Institutional Partnerships: Memento and Deutsche, Tradable and Victory Park / Janus Handersen, UBS, GRVT which contributed to making ZKsync the largest RWA chain after Ethereum, 4x larger than the 3rd.
The Foundation has also supported the ZKsync Association in bootstraping the governance system and deploying essential tooling in its first year. As the Governance Team mentioned in February, the validation phase of governance is complete. Some tooling examples include:
- The Capped Minter V2 and the Minter Modifier standards (work-in-progress).
- The GovAuth tool, used by Security Council, Guardians, and the Emergency Response Board.
Finally, the Foundation supported the work on the recently-announced ZKsync Prividium, which is going to be a game changer for Enterprise and Financial Institution adoption of Crypto as it allows to safely comply with rules while maintaining credible neutrality and full interoperability with the broader Ethereum Ecosystem.
Re: Sustainable & Secure Protocol Development
Ensuring sustainable and secure protocol upgrades has been the main focus for the ZKsync Foundation and the Token Assembly has also placed this item at the top of the priorities list (see GAP-1). [TPP-3] ZKsync Audit Reimbursement Program (ZARP) was submitted as a proposal draft on the forum on April 8th and passed on chain as of May 23rd. This program increases security standards across the ZKsync protocol by reimbursing the costs associated with third-party audits of successful ZIPs. This program will ensure that ZIP developers strive for the exceptional security audit standards, resulting in secure and robust contributions to the ZKsync protocol, and lowers the barrier to for DevCos to contribute to proposal development.
It was essential to prioritize this proposal because of all the major protocol upgrades that are expected to ship this year. In 2025 alone, these protocol upgrades include the upgrades like EVM Equivalence, Gateway/interop, SSO, ZKOS, real time proving, performance improvements to costs and TPS, etc. This program helps ensure these proposals are able to receive the highest-quality audits, and establishes mechanics supporting long-term, sustainable protocol development from capable dev teams.
Matter Labs, for example, recently posted a Q1 2025 deliverables report, outlining all critical protocol work that it is working on this year. And with the removal of the Audit costs burden, we hope to see other DevCos making similar roadmap proposals of their own soon.
Re: Ecosystem Growth
With the EVM Interpreter now implemented by ZIP-9, and Gateway activation on the horizon via ZIP-10, new opportunities for ecosystem proposals are opening up. The removal of key infrastructure barriers lays a strong foundation for program development that can foster meaningful network effects across the Elastic Network by incentivizing ZK Chain growth & participation.
RWAs have also become a strong source of Network Effects; ZKsync is already winning in the space and there is ample margins to solidify this strong position and leap forward with proposals aimed at growing this important part of the Ecosystem.
The Governance Team has also made headway on laying the ground-work for more dynamic token mechanics for these programs with continued experimentation with the Capped Minter V2 and development of Minter Mods that enable more modularity and security for capped minters.
Over the past months, the key areas of inspiration for ecosystem proposal development have been:
- ZKsync Chain adoption and Elastic Network growth
- ZKsync Prividiums and Enterprise adoption
- RWA dominance on ZKsync
These three areas have positive feedback loop with the technically superior zk-based interoperability that will come with Gateway, with the Network Effect that is being built around RWA and with Prividium which, at the moment, is the only solution in the market for Enterprises and Financial Institutions that is both technically feasible and available in mainnet.
We have been working on various proposals for these three areas of growth and we will start to discuss them with the broader community soon.
Role of Delegates on Foundation proposals:
We continue to ask Delegates for their input and feedback on ZKsync Foundation-driven proposals that are posted on the forum. Community feedback and suggestions are highly valued and will help us to refine these proposals.
As ecosystem proposals progress from ideation to development, the Foundataion will share program needs and seek support from TPP Builders who have expressed an interest in providing services to TPPs.
The upcoming Delegate calls will be good opportunities to discuss more about these topics and gather feedback, suggestions and comments from the Delegates. Looking forward to the continued discussion!