The economics of zkSync Era’s sequencer revenue sharing

Institutional fee capture

The governance of zkSync prioritizes institutional adoption through a 67M ZK monthly allocation to Matter Labs for 12 months to execute the Prividium roadmap. This allocation, which passed with 1.09B ZK in favor, uses a monthly sequential unlock with no cliff and relies on a 5/7 Program Admin Multisig comprising three Foundation, two ZKGPS, and two Security Council signers. These institutions include the Cari Network, which manages tokenized deposits for five U.S. regional banks including Huntington Bancshares, First Horizon, M&T Bank, KeyCorp, and Old National Bancorp, and Memento, the deployment platform for Deutsche Bank’s DAMA2 tokenized fund. The protocol handles fee-flow via the ScopeLift architecture and plans a v31 upgrade to introduce interop fees based on cross-chain messages. The monthly allocation of 67M ZK to Matter Labs, valued at approximately $1M USD per month, aims to fund Prividium engineering and the specific business development required to convert a large pipeline of over 30 institutions into deployed, production-ready chains over the next twelve months. As institutional adoption scales, the protocol routes fee generation back to the network through the Network Fee Pool. The program also supports the ADI Chain, which includes First Abu Dhabi Bank, BlackRock, Mastercard, and Franklin Templeton. This effort establishes the protocol as the de facto settlement network for programmable finance on Ethereum.

Sequencer control and risks

Matter Labs operates the prover and sequencer, which means the network stays centralized for now. This centralized model allows for faster finality because the sequencer decides transaction ordering before submitting ZK-SNARK proofs to Ethereum. The technology uses these proofs to verify that grouped transactions are valid without showing any details about them. However, a single operator controlling transaction ordering creates risks regarding censorship and MEV extraction. The current 2026 roadmap focuses on scaling via the ZK Stack and Airbender layers to meet institutional needs. The transition to a decentralized sequencer remains in progress. You should observe that the Security Council holds the pauser role on each monthly capped minter. Will the current fee-routing mechanisms remain sufficient once the network reaches full production-grade decentralization? The ZK Credo manifesto expresses concern about governance power concentrating in the hands of a few, arguing that the community must embrace decentralization to ensure lasting protection. Zero-knowledge technology helps the network increase privacy and throughput. The architecture reduces the per-transaction data footprint by approximately 95% compared to the Ethereum mainnet.

Revenue shifts and token supply

Revenue for zkSync Era shifted dramatically following the June 24 airdrop of 3.675 billion ZK tokens. Daily revenue fell from a peak of $746,000 before the airdrop to $6,800 last week, coinciding with the exodus of users and liquidity from the network. The ZK token represents 17.5% of the 21B total supply through the airdrop, leaving a circulating supply of 10.9B. The ZK token value saw a decline of 64.06% year-to-date.

The total tokenized real-world asset market approaches $29 billion. Global stablecoin supply has passed $300 billion, with 93% of tokenized U.S. assets and $157 billion in regulated stablecoin supply settling on Ethereum. JPMorgan’s Kinexys has processed more than $1.5 trillion on blockchain rails, and the DTCC is moving forward with the tokenization of U.S. Treasuries and major index ETFs. The exodus of farmers, consisting of users who interact with protocols primarily to qualify for airdrops, highlights the challenges of building sustainable ecosystems in a market driven by airdrop anticipation.