ZKsync to shut down ZKsync Lite on May 4 as assets and projects move to ZKsync Era ecosystem

ZKsync will officially deactivate ZKsync Lite on May 4, halting block production and permanently freezing the network's final state, Odaily Planet Daily reports. Launched in June 2020 as ZKsync 1.0 and known as Ethereum's first zero-knowledge proof rollup without smart contract support, ZKsync Lite stopped active development in March 2023 after Matter Labs introduced ZKsync Era, a zkEVM that supports arbitrary smart contracts. The team said this shutdown will not impact ZKsync Era or other networks built with the ZK Stack framework, and a read-only API will remain available for at least one year after shutdown to facilitate data access. Users are urged to withdraw assets before May 4, while unclaimed funds will still be retrievable later, and L2BEAT data show about $33.9 million currently on ZKsync Lite via the standard bridge, including roughly $24.9 million in stablecoins, $8.4 million in ETH and derivatives, $313,000 in BTC and derivatives, and $231,000 in other tokens.