There is something that has recently gone viral in the Ethereum community—ZKsync Lite officially announced that it will be phased out in 2026. At first glance, it sounds like the project is over, but that is not the case. This is a natural process of technological evolution, reflecting the development trajectory of the entire Layer2 ecosystem.

Let's go back to 2020. When ZKsync Lite launched as the first ZK-Rollup solution on Ethereum, it was indeed a technical breakthrough. It used zero-knowledge proofs to package and compress transactions, which not only improved throughput but also significantly reduced Gas costs—at that time, this solution was considered leading in the industry. However, its limitations were also fatal: it did not support smart contract execution and could only handle basic payments and NFT minting, leaving complex DeFi interactions completely unsupported. In other words, it was a feature phone, inherently limited in the era of smart contracts.

The turning point came in 2023. The ZKsync upgrade launched the Era version, which truly achieved smart contract compatibility. From the perspective of user activity, it is very clear—Lite now has only over 300 transactions per day, while Era has long stabilized at over 20,000 transactions. This data gap itself speaks volumes. More intuitively, Lite's cross-chain bridge still locks nearly $50 million in assets, but the daily trading volume has become virtually non-existent, which is a true reflection of the "retirement" state.

The decision by ZKsync's official team is actually quite restrained – instead of aggressively shutting down directly, they provided an orderly transition period. This indicates that the project team is considering the interests of existing users, rather than making a purely technical decision. For early participants, the deadline in 2026 is sufficient to complete fund migration and ecological transition. This also reflects the gradual maturation of the Layer2 market: inferior or outdated solutions will naturally exit, while superior solutions will emerge. Whether ZKsync Era can seize this momentum ultimately depends on the upcoming ecological development and application implementation.