ZKsync to Discontinue ZKsync Lite Service in 2025

In accordance with 528btc, ZKsync, an Ethereum scaling solution developed by Matter Labs, announced on Sunday that it plans to discontinue ZKsync Lite in 2025. The network, launched in June 2020, was an early zero-knowledge payment rollup. The team described the move as a 'planned and orderly retirement' of a system that has 'completed its mission,' with no impact on other ZKsync systems. ZKsync Lite served as a proof-of-concept and helped validate key ideas for the production version of ZKsync. It laid the foundation for the current ZKsync Era and ZK Stack. The announcement marks a formal shift that began in February 2023, when ZKsync 1.0 was replaced by ZKsync Lite. Engineering work on ZKsync Lite was halted a month later, with the team redirected to other projects. ZKsync Era, launched in 2023, is now the core of Matter Labs' zkEVM ecosystem. ZKsync Lite, which supported transfers, NFT minting, and basic swaps but lacked smart contract support, has seen its daily active usage drop to under 200 operations, according to L2Beat. It still holds around $49 million in bridged assets, which can be withdrawn to Ethereum via L1 contracts. ZKsync confirmed that Ethereum withdrawals will continue to function during the deprecation process, with a timeline to be announced in the coming year.