ZKsync Aims to Scale Financial Sector with $2.4 Billion TVL Milestone
ZKsync has reached a major milestone with $2.4 billion in total value locked (TVL), signaling a pivotal moment for its scaling efforts in the financial sector. Matter Labs is focusing on the ZK Stack, Prividium, and Airbender to ensure the platform meets the demands of global financial institutions. Prividium, described as a banking stack, integrates access control, transaction approval, and reporting into enterprise workflows. Gluchowski emphasized that sensitive financial data cannot be public without compromising competitiveness, confidentiality, and legal compliance.
The 2026 roadmap for ZKsync shifts from technical foundations to large-scale implementation in real financial systems. In 2025, the team launched Atlas, Prividium, and Airbender as a unified system, demonstrating capabilities for institutional deployments. The platform relies on cryptography for trust, eliminating human factors. Consultations with banks, corporations, and governments throughout the year addressed needs for privacy, control, risk management, and interoperability.
ZKsync is evolving towards orchestrated ZK networks and hyperchains, enabling seamless interaction between public and private networks without third-party bridges. Hyperchains act as sovereign, custom ZK-chains running on top of Layer-1 or Layer-2 networks, offering modular, app-specific environments. Airbender, the fastest RISC-V zkVM, aims to standardize zkVM within Ethereum’s broader strategy. However, ZKsync faces stiff competition from Arbitrum and Optimism, with TVL gaps posing a significant challenge.
Transaction costs on ZKsync remain significantly lower than on Ethereum, with a one-time bridging fee being a fixed obstacle. A $5 million theft in April 2025 led to a price drop of almost 20%. The project plans to deprecate ZKsync Lite in 2026, focusing instead on the ZK Stack and Prividium. Regulatory frameworks in the US and Europe may need to adapt to accommodate the privacy needs of ZK-proof applications.