At first glance, ZKsync Era may seem like one of many Elastic Chains powered by ZK Stack—sharing the ecosystem with Cronos zkEVM, Abstract, Haurist, Sophon, GRVT, Lens Protocol, and others. But look closer, and it becomes clear: ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains is much more than just being a part of the ecosystem—it’s the gravitational force shaping the trajectory of Elastic chains.
Not because other Elastic Chains depend on Era. They don’t.
But because Era’s maturity, liquidity, integrations, and governance structures naturally benefit the entire network—by default, without dependency.
If you’re launching your own Elastic Chain, you don’t settle on the ZKsync Era as of now. Yet the advantages Era offers—battle-tested infra, deep liquidity, seamless onramps—are yours to tap into.
This article unpacks how ZKsync Era, the first and most production-ready Elastic Chain, plays a role much bigger than most realize.
ZK Sync Era: Origin, Nature, & Features
ZKsync didn’t start as an ‘All in ZK’ ecosystem. It began in 2021 as a simple zk-rollup designed for payments. But by 2023, ZKsync introduced the first zkEVM Layer 2, setting a new benchmark in scalability with a TPS of 2,000, and a block time of 1.3 seconds.
The real turning point was 2024. That’s when ZKsync Era transitioned into an Elastic Chain—the very first to deploy zkStack’s full potential, plugging into Ethereum directly while unlocking new possibilities for app-specific chains.
@zksync does not always mean Era!
— porter | ZKsync ∎ (@portport255) December 10, 2024
– ZKsync is the technology that powers the Elastic Chain
– Elastic Chain refers to all ZKsync chains
– Era is the name of the first ZKsync chain in the Elastic Chain pic.twitter.com/XWxDkZcoEt
Also Read: ZKsync’s Elastic Chain: A Bold Move Towards More Interconnected Layer3s
Fast forward to today, here are the numbers that speak for themselves
- 455+ million transactions processed
- 273+ live dApps
- $795M+ bridged TVL
- $430M+ DeFi TVL (+177% MoM growth)
- $2B+ RWA TVL (27.5% of global RWA share, second only to Ethereum L1)
16 Elastic Chains have gone live. All settle independently on Ethereum.
But ZKsync Era leads in maturity, adoption, and infrastructure readiness. That’s why ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains is paramount today.
Why will ZKSync Era have A Bigger Role Among Elastic Chains?
#1 An Unconventional Rollup Chain With Network Effect
One of the greatest challenges for any new blockchain isn’t just deploying the chain itself—it’s everything surrounding it. Wallet integrations, fiat ramps, bridge protocols, explorers, developer tooling, liquidity sources—all the layers of infrastructure and ecosystem integrations that transform a chain from “launched” to “usable.”
ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic chains is that of a battle-tested technical foundation—one that Elastic Chains can leverage from day one to avoid starting from scratch.
Because Era launched first, it became the proving ground for zkStack-powered chains. Every major technical integration—whether it’s with fiat onramps like Transak, bridge infrastructure like LayerSwap, txSync, Rhino or wallet providers—was implemented, audited, and stress-tested at scale on Era before other Elastic Chains even went live.
Now, as the Elastic Network expands, all of this becomes part of the shared value proposition.
This wasn’t trivial; building robust, secure, compliant integrations for cross-chain asset movement or user onboarding is often the most time-consuming aspect of launching a chain.
Now, thanks to ZK Stack’s native interoperability and Era’s groundwork, Elastic Chains can tap into these integrations at the infra level—seamlessly and immediately. You’re not inheriting business partnerships; you’re inheriting readiness. ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains can be likened to an incubator or accelerator, helping Elastic Chains scale using its network and integrations.
For builders, this reduces months of work. Through providers like Zeeve, these integrations—bridging protocols, fiat on/off ramps, RPC providers, wallet support—are packaged and available out of the box. Chains can skip the heavy lifting, focusing instead on their vertical: gaming, DeFi, Crypto xAI, identity, or enterprise.
But infrastructure alone doesn’t create a strong network. ZKsync Era’s early lead also translated into rapid developer adoption, liquidity growth, and ecosystem maturity. Over 273 dApps live, billions in DeFi and RWA liquidity secured, and millions of users onboarded.
What this means for other Elastic Chains is straightforward: they aren’t launching in isolation. With zkStack’s native interoperability, liquidity and user flows between chains will be fluid, not fragmented. A DeFi protocol on one chain can compose with liquidity pools on ZKsync Era without friction. A user onboarding via fiat ramp on Era can move seamlessly to an app on another Elastic Chain without dealing with separate bridging systems.
ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains is also tied to its ZK token. ZK token’s value accrual flow will soon be reflected in the upcoming ZK tokenomics.
2024:$ZK is tied to Era.
— The ZKnomist (@TheZKnomist) January 29, 2025
2025:$ZK is tied to Era, Abstract, Treasure, Lens, GRVT, ZKcandy, ZERO Network, etc.
Era’s network strength—whether in liquidity, dApp adoption, or technical integrations—becomes a default advantage, without being a dependency.
For Elastic Chain teams, it’s simple:
You control your chain, your governance, your partnerships.
But the technical and ecosystem groundwork ZK Sync Era has built is there, ready for you to leverage—saving time, reducing complexity, and making your chain part of a larger, composable network from day one.
#2 ZK Sync Era’s Promise of Massive Liquidity
Liquidity is often described as the lifeblood of any blockchain ecosystem. But in the Elastic Network, it plays an even more defining role—not just because each chain needs liquidity to thrive, but because how that liquidity is structured can determine whether the entire network functions as a cohesive, efficient system or becomes fragmented and inefficient.
ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains can be that of the liquidity hub. This is a byproduct of both its early adoption and deliberate efforts to attract capital-intensive protocols, institutional players, and a wide range of DeFi ecosystems.
- Over $795 million in bridged TVL and $430 million in DeFi TVL currently reside on Era.
- It has attracted $181 million in total DeFi TVL, with 177% growth in January 2025 alone
- Institutions and banks like Sygnum Bank, Deutsche Bank, and UBS have their funds on the chain.
But the true story isn’t just about big numbers or names—it’s about the network-wide implications of ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains being the financial center of gravity.
In a typical multi-chain environment, liquidity tends to splinter. Each chain competes for its own share, launching duplicated DeFi protocols, trying to incentivize LPs separately, and dealing with fragmented liquidity pools that reduce efficiency and increase slippage. The problem compounds as more chains join the ecosystem, each introducing yet another isolated pool of liquidity.
This is exactly the scenario that ZKsync Era prevents within the Elastic Network. By concentrating liquidity and composable DeFi protocols on Era, the network sidesteps the fragmentation issue. Every Elastic Chain can interact with Era’s liquidity directly—without the need to redeploy protocols, without fragmenting LP incentives, and without suffering capital inefficiency.
Consider a DeFi protocol launching on an Elastic Chain specializing in gaming or tradfi. Instead of setting up separate liquidity pools and starting from scratch, it can natively tap into the depth of Era’s financial layer. That means immediate access to stablecoin pools, lending platforms, and decentralized exchanges that are already liquid and operational—no bridges, no manual migrations, no fragmented user experience.
What makes this even more powerful is the native interoperability zkStack is enabling. Once interop is fully implemented, the liquidity concentration on Era doesn’t act as a constraint; it acts as a shared financial engine for all Elastic Chains. Liquidity can be routed, shared, and composed across chains without additional trust assumptions or intermediary infrastructure, giving even greater relevance to ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains.
Adding fuel to this, the ZKsync Ignite program is further amplifying ZKsync Era’s role in the Elastic Chains as that of the liquidity magnet.
The @zksync Era market has grown by 160% in the past week.@ZKsyncIgnite is working 👻 pic.twitter.com/YMtx5jf4qn
— Aave (@aave) January 10, 2025
By injecting 325 million ZK tokens as liquidity incentives across protocols, the program strengthens ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains as a liquidity base while ensuring it remains attractive for new protocols, institutional players, and LPs. More importantly, this liquidity doesn’t stay confined—it naturally radiates across the Elastic Network, giving newer chains access to deep liquidity from day one, without the friction of bootstrapping their own.
This results in a scalable, interoperable financial layer where Elastic Chains don’t compete for liquidity—they share it. Each chain focuses on its vertical, its user base, its innovations, while Era’s financial infrastructure underpins the entire system, eliminating fragmentation without imposing dependency.
In any blockchain ecosystem, liquidity often becomes the limiting factor. In the Elastic Network, ZKsync Era changed it into a shared asset.
#3 The Governance Hub
ZKsync Era’s governance is designed in three tiers to keep it censorship-resistant, credible, and neutral on all grounds. No single person has the power to make changes in the ZKsync protocol. The three bodies that control governance in ZKsync Era are the Token Assembly, Security Council, and Guardians.
Security Council and Guardians are blockchain organizations or BORGs legally governed by smart contracts coded with tech-specific rules and are bound by strict service agreements for unbiased and effective decision-making.
The Token Assembly includes the token holders responsible for delegating their voting power to the Delegates. It votes on proposals for protocol upgrades, tokens, and other governance decisions. The Token Assembly can initiate ordinary upgrades directly on the blockchain.
But what does this mean for Elastic Chains? For Elastic Chains, governance sovereignty is paramount. No chain wants to compromise its autonomy or have critical decisions dictated by another chain’s governance body.
ZKsync Era doesn’t require that.
ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains becomes significant as it offers a neutral, proven governance structure that other Elastic Chains can choose to leverage—when and where it makes sense.
- A chain building a public-sector use case—say, a government-backed digital ID system—can anchor sensitive governance processes to Era’s credible neutrality, ensuring decisions can’t be censored or manipulated.
- Multi-chain DeFi protocols operating across several Elastic Chains might choose Era’s governance ground for key protocol upgrades or treasury management, ensuring cross-chain fairness without reinventing the wheel.
- Emerging Elastic Chains lacking initial governance infrastructure can opt into Era’s mature governance model temporarily, giving them a secure foundation while they develop their own systems.
None of this is obligatory. Every Elastic Chain retains full control to govern itself, fork, upgrade, or integrate independently.
In the future, we will likely see every elastic chain using ZKsync’s Governance to make critical protocol decisions, given the justness, transparency, and equity it embodies. However, the Zksync Era needs to reach Stage 1 and Stage 2 in the rollup stages to attain the maturity required for a protocol to handle such a level of multi-chain/protocol governance procedures.
Two Possible Futures For ZK Sync Era and Elastic Chains
As more developments roll out, ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains is bound to grow in the coming years. Once native interoperability fully kicks in, all the elastic chains will be capable of communicating between themselves, sharing liquidity, and scaling horizontally without the need for bridges. It will be as seamless and fluid as possible.
Despite the criticisms around centralized sequencers and other Stage 0 vulnerabilities, ZKsync Era is already working to decentralize its sequencers via a new consensus algorithm called ChonkyBFT to vote on all newly created blocks. The forced inclusion queue remains the last missing step in nullifying Stage 0 vulnerabilities.
Here are some quick facts about ChonkyBFT consensus:
— ZKsync Developers (∎, ∆) (@zkSyncDevs) February 12, 2025
✅It has been developed in house and formally verified.
✅Its features include single slot finality, one round of voting, and n=5f+1 fault tolerance.
✅It was inspired by FaB Paxos, Fast-Hotstuff, and Hotstuff-2.
Read more…
Alex Gluchowski, the co-founder of ZKsync Era and CEO of Matter Labs, counts the near-term goals as significant growth, more active chains, higher transaction volumes and user counts, and massive liquidity growth. He also predicts a rise in private chains and privacy-focused transactions.
There can be two possible futures.
If Era successfully scales and decentralizes governance, liquidity, and infra-sharing, ZKsync Era’s role in Elastic Chains could be even bigger as it becomes the next ultimate Layer 2. But challenges remain. If ZKsync Era fails to deliver its promise, it could struggle to maintain its dominance.
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