ZKsync to Decommission ZKsync Lite by 2026
Date: 2025-12-09 Author: Oliver Abernathy Categories: BUSINESS
The ZKsync team has officially announced that it will decommission ZKsync Lite, its first ZK rollup solution launched in 2020 as ZKsync 1.0, in 2026. The developers noted that the platform has fulfilled its purpose, and its gradual shutdown will be a logical conclusion to the lifecycle of the technology upon which the project's future products are built.
According to company representatives, the decommissioning of ZKsync Lite will not affect other solutions in the ecosystem. In the coming months, the team promised to publish a detailed decommissioning schedule and instructions for users to safely transfer assets. Until these recommendations are released, the system will continue to function normally, without the need for immediate action.
ZKsync Lite was created as a lightweight scaling layer with a focus on payments. It supported token transfers, atomic swaps, and NFT issuance, but did not support smart contracts. As the industry matured and more flexible solutions emerged, the Lite version's role gradually diminished. The developers emphasized that it served as an important experiment, confirming the viability of the zero-knowledge approach and laying the foundation for more advanced technologies.
After the release of ZKsync Era—a full-fledged zkEVM solution capable of processing arbitrary smart contracts—the team ceased active development on Lite in March 2023. However, the network continued to operate, and according to L2BEAT, it still holds over $50 million in user assets, although daily activity remains low.
The ZKsync ecosystem situation in 2025 was complicated by several factors. In the spring, the project suffered a security incident: an attacker accessed the airdrop contract and stole approximately $5 million in ZK tokens, causing a significant price decline. The assets were later returned after a reward offered by the team. Market conditions added pressure: the Ignite liquidity program was shut down, and Aave DAO is considering shutting down its ZKsync Era deployment due to low revenues.
Despite these challenges, the team emphasizes that users can continue to use ZKsync Lite, and all operations, including asset withdrawals to L1, will remain available until the process is fully completed. However, the primary focus of future development will shift to ZK Stack, Prividiums, and new solutions that are expected to shape the next evolutionary phase of the project's ecosystem.
