The co-creator of Ethereum scaling solution ZKsync has suggested a significant revamp of its governance token, emphasizing the need to focus on “economic utility.”
In a Tuesday post on the ZKsync forum, Alex Gluchowski noted that while the token was useful in the project’s early days—when the “architecture and adoption path were still forming”—the network has grown rapidly since then.
Gluchowski highlighted that ZKsync now supports an ecosystem of interconnected zero-knowledge chains, making it crucial for the token to reflect network value and help drive broader ecosystem adoption.
“The goal is to align usage with value, make decentralization economically sustainable, and ensure the network captures a meaningful share of the economic benefits it creates.”
Gluchowski, who also serves as co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs—the company behind ZKsync—stressed that funds should be reinvested into the “network’s economy” to support ongoing infrastructure upgrades, security improvements, public goods funding, and “long-term independence.”
“The aim is to create a self-sustaining economic loop where adoption expands network resources, and those resources, in turn, enhance the network for all participants,” he explained.
New tokenomics linked to revenue
Gluchowski detailed that the redesigned ZK token would gain on-chain value from sources such as protocol-native fees generated by “interoperability and other core settlement and messaging functions,” and off-chain value through licensing agreements for “enterprise software components.”
Although ZKsync’s stack is open-source and free to use, Gluchowski argued that large enterprises leveraging “community-built infrastructure” for complex applications—like treasury integrations—should contribute back to the ecosystem.
“When such capabilities are funded by the ecosystem, it is reasonable that enterprise use of them returns value to the network,” he said.
All of the value captured would then flow into a “governance-controlled system,” which would allocate it to ZK market buybacks, staking rewards, token burns, and ecosystem funding.
“For decentralization to endure, it must be economically sustainable. The network requires a robust economic model that supports ongoing development, security, and operations by numerous independent participants—not a single central sponsor,” Gluchowski said.
ZKsync has been exploring changes to its governance token for several months. In June, Omar Azhar, Matter Labs’ head of business development, shared a “ZKnomics Roadmap Vision” on the project’s forum.
“ZKnomics is designed to align ZK with the long-term health and sustainability of the protocol. It proposes a system where network usage generates protocol revenue, which is then programmatically allocated toward two main objectives: incentivizing protocol participants and managing token supply,” Azhar wrote.
The timeline for implementing the token overhaul remains uncertain. Gluchowski also shared the proposal on X to gather community feedback, noting that additional details will be released “once there is broad support for this direction.”
