zkSync Era batches users' transactions and submits them to Ethereum together with a zero-knowledge proof, paying a share of the transaction fees to Ethereum validators (expense).

zkSync Era is an L2 smart contract platform for decentralized applications on Ethereum. zkSync Era was founded by Matter Labs and launched in 2023.

Matter Labs team owns and governs the protocol. Matter Labs' investors include a16z, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Blockchain Capital, etc.

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zkSync Era

# zkSync Era Earnings Methodology

## 1. Overview

zkSync Era earnings represents the net profit generated by the zkSync Era Layer 2 blockchain, calculated as revenue minus expenses. The metric measures the protocol's financial performance by subtracting operational costs (primarily L1 settlement fees) from revenue generated through transaction fees collected on the L2 network. This provides insight into the protocol's economic sustainability and profitability.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on the following raw data sources:

- **zkSync Era transaction records**: Complete transaction data from the zkSync Era L2 blockchain including gas usage amounts, effective gas prices, block timestamps, and transaction participants
- **Ethereum transaction records**: L1 Ethereum transactions specifically sent to zkSync Era validator timelock contract addresses, including gas usage, gas prices, blob gas usage, and blob gas prices for settlement operations
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: Daily closing prices for ETH and other tokens used for USD conversion and standardization
- **Token metadata**: Information about token symbols, decimal places, and contract addresses for proper token identification and amount calculation

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: L2 transaction fee collection
- **Purpose**: Calculates daily revenue from transaction fees collected on the zkSync Era L2 network
- **Logic**: Extracts all zkSync Era transactions and multiplies the `gas_used` amount by the `effective_gas_price` for each transaction. The effective gas price is converted from wei to ETH by dividing by 10^18. Daily totals are calculated by truncating timestamps to day boundaries and summing fee amounts by token address. All transactions use ETH (WETH address `0xc02aaa39b223fe8d0a0e5c4f27ead9083c756cc2`) as the fee token.
- **Key fields**: `gas_used` (gas units consumed), `effective_gas_price` (price per gas unit in wei), `block_timestamp` (transaction timing), `token_address` (always WETH for fees)

### Component B: L1 settlement cost calculation  
- **Purpose**: Determines the daily operational expenses from settling zkSync Era batches on Ethereum L1
- **Logic**: Identifies Ethereum transactions sent to specific validator timelock addresses (`0x3db52ce065f728011ac6732222270b3f2360d919`, `0xa0425d71cb1d6fb80e65a5361a04096e0672de03`, `0xa8cb082a5a689e0d594d7da1e2d72a3d63adc1bd`, `0x5d8ba173dc6c3c90c8f7c04c9288bef5fdbad06e`) which represent L1 settlement transactions. For each transaction, calculates total settlement cost by multiplying `receipt_gas_used` by `receipt_effective_gas_price` and adding blob gas costs (if applicable) by multiplying `receipt_blob_gas_used` by `receipt_blob_gas_price`. Final amounts are converted from wei to ETH and aggregated daily.
- **Key fields**: `receipt_gas_used` (L1 gas consumed), `receipt_effective_gas_price` (L1 gas price), `receipt_blob_gas_used` (blob gas for data availability), `receipt_blob_gas_price` (blob gas pricing)

### Component C: Revenue calculation
- **Purpose**: Standardizes L2 transaction fees as protocol revenue
- **Logic**: Takes daily aggregated L2 transaction fees and converts them to USD using end-of-day price feeds. The chain identifier is mapped from 'ethereum' to 'zksyncera' for proper protocol categorization. Revenue represents all fees collected from users transacting on the zkSync Era network.
- **Key fields**: `fee_amount` (daily L2 fees in ETH), converted to USD equivalent

### Component D: Cost of revenue calculation
- **Purpose**: Standardizes L1 settlement costs as the primary operational expense
- **Logic**: Takes daily aggregated L1 settlement costs and converts them to USD using end-of-day price feeds. These costs represent the expenses zkSync Era incurs to settle transaction batches and maintain security on the Ethereum mainnet.
- **Key fields**: `l1_settlement_amount` (daily L1 costs in ETH), converted to USD equivalent

### Component E: Token incentives calculation
- **Purpose**: Accounts for token-based rewards or incentives (currently zero)
- **Logic**: zkSync Era currently has no token incentive programs, so token incentives are set to zero for all time periods. This component exists to maintain consistency with the standard earnings calculation framework.
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives` (always zero)

### Component F: Expenses aggregation
- **Purpose**: Combines all operational expenses into total expenses
- **Logic**: Sums the cost of revenue (L1 settlement costs) and token incentives to create total expenses. Since token incentives are zero, total expenses equal the L1 settlement costs.
- **Key fields**: `expenses` (sum of cost of revenue and token incentives)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The earnings calculation subtracts total expenses from revenue using the `calculate_earnings` macro, which performs: earnings = revenue - expenses
- **Currency conversion**: All amounts are converted to USD using end-of-day price feeds through the `convert_to_usd_and_correct_decimals` macro, which handles decimal corrections and applies appropriate exchange rates
- **Time aggregation**: All calculations use daily boundaries created by truncating timestamps to the day level using `timestamp_trunc(block_timestamp, day)`
- **Final calculation**: Daily earnings = Daily L2 transaction fees (revenue) - Daily L1 settlement costs (expenses), with the result representing zkSync Era's net profit in USD for each day

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Net profit (also profits, net income, profitability) — revenue remaining after subtracting expenses.

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Earnings

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