Matter Labs CEO anticipates ZKsync governance will explore value accrual mechanisms in near future

Matter Labs co-founder and CEO Alex Gluchowski said he reckons the ZKsync governance will start discussing changes to the ZKsync token in the near future, adding more functionality such as mechanisms that accrual value to the token.

“Well, the governance token is a stem cell of a token,” Gluchowski said on The Crypto Beat podcast, part of The Block’s podcast network. “The governance can always vote to upgrade the token functionality to anything else, to add more functionality, to add more value accrual mechanisms, to make things more interesting.” He added that he thinks this discussion will happen in the near term in the ZKsync community and among the wider Elastic Network governance.

The Elastic Network refers to the collection of networks in the ZKsync ecosystem that are able to easily interact with each other, something that’s known as interoperability. Gluchowski said that this interoperability opens a new dimension of what’s required from a token and how the value accrual — and value exchange between the main network and wider ecosystem of chains — will play out. “So yes, I expect there will be massive changes there,” he said.

Value accrual is a key question for many token holders because it refers to how well a token benefits from the growth of its ecosystem. This can be done through a network or protocol sharing its revenue with token holders or through the burning of tokens to reduce supply. For instance, when transaction fees on Ethereum were high, this led to a high burn rate in the transaction fee process resulting in a falling supply — something that’s typically perceived as bullish for token prices. 

However, with Layer 2 networks now able to store data on Ethereum more cheaply, thanks to the introduction of data packets called blobs, and with some networks using other storage solutions like Celestia, this burning has rapidly decreased. Ethereum’s supply has been consistently increasing since April 2024 and is now higher than it was when The Merge took place (Ethereum’s move to proof of stake).

On this issue, Gluchowski said he thinks it’s unlikely Ethereum will return to the high fee levels at the peak of its economic activity when the chain was very congested. But he doesn’t see this as a bad thing. Instead, he argued that the Ethereum community needs to focus on the blockchain’s native asset, ETH, as being the store of value and the native collateral of the emerging Ethereum economy. 

“The proliferation of Layer 2s, both public Layer 2s, degen-oriented Layer 2s for risk capital and enterprise/institutional-oriented Layer 2s for big institutional capital is going to turn Ethereum into the Internet of value, the global economy that is happening onchain,” he said. “So in this economy, there is no better asset than ETH to serve as native collateral and serve as a native store of value.”

Gluchowski added that the Layer 2 ecosystem needs to coordinate better to make sure it builds mechanisms that channel value back to Ethereum — and he said Matter Labs will share some ideas later this month on how this can be done.