Matter Labs Lays Off Staff and Shifts Focus to Institutional Privacy Platform Prividium

Matter Labs, the developer behind zkSync, announced layoffs on Tuesday and said it is shifting its organization toward Prividium, an institutional-grade on-chain privacy infrastructure platform. According to ChainCatcher, CEO Alex Gluchowski said on X that the move is a skills reorganization rather than a cost-cutting measure. He said products the company has been building for regulated financial institutions since 2024 have evolved into Prividium, which aims to provide banks, asset managers, and other regulated entities with on-chain infrastructure that supports transaction confidentiality alongside compliance auditing. Gluchowski said the pivot was driven by specific product feedback from institutional clients, but he did not disclose how many employees were affected. CoinGecko data cited in the report put the zkSync token’s market capitalization at about $115 million, with the token up 4.3% over the past 24 hours. The shift comes as some zero-knowledge and Layer 2 projects have shut down, including Hyli and Botanix, amid pressure on general-purpose platforms to find more defensible vertical markets. Matter Labs has not commented on the future of the zkSync network or the ZK token as of publication.