ZKsync airdrop: Things to know and community reaction

Some important information and analysis about ZKsync's airdrop.

zkSync launches ZK token

After much speculation and controversy related to the ticker, zkSync officially announced the ZK token airdrop and established the DAO with the name ZK Nation. Basic information about the ZK token given by the project:

·      Total supply: 21B ZK
·      Airdrop: 17.5% of total supply, equivalent to 3,675B ZK
·      Investors: 17.2%
·      Project team: 16.1%
·      Ecosystem development: 19.9%
·      ZK Nation's reserve fund (Token Assembly): 29.3%
Specifically, information about ZK's airdrop is as follows:
·      89% of the total airdrop supply is reserved for users on zkSync, a small part is reserved for project teams and builders in the ecosystem.
·      695,232 valid wallets.
·      Each wallet will receive from 450 to 100,000 ZK depending on conditions.
·      The snapshot time is March 24, 2024, which is also the 1-year anniversary of zkSync Era's mainnet.
According to tokenomics from the project, at the beginning there will only be tokens belonging to the Community group. In particular, all airdrop tokens will be unlocked immediately, the rest in the Community group will be managed by zkSync Foundation and on-chain management process through ZK Nation.

The token portion of the project and investors will be paid in installments over 4 years and locked for the first year (until June 2025). This means that the initial total supply of ZK will mainly come from the community airdrop.

How to fight sybil

ZK's airdrop and anti-sybil criteria are outlined in the ZK token introduction blog. Accordingly, the project aims to reward real users and a loyal community. The project is divided into many criteria and multipliers. To receive the airdrop, users need to meet at least 1 criterion.

At the same time, the project also highlights the importance of holding asset balances on wallets or DeFi protocols throughout the mainnet process, which helps zkSync have more liquidity. Some other coefficients highlighted include:
·      Become a part of the ZKsync culture by owning native NFTs on ZKsync.
·      Support the ZKsync ecosystem by holding native ERC20 tokens on ZKsync.
·      Testing the account abstraction feature of ZKsync Era using a smart contract wallet.
·      Receive and hold previous token airdrops from other ETH communities to remain committed to the long-term success of the network.
·      Trade with popular ETH network smart contracts and discover and use new dapps.
Additionally, several NFT communities such as Pudgy Penguins, Milady, and wallet addresses receiving DEGEN, Farcaster's BONSAI, and Lens Network also received airdrops. ZKsync will be the first ZK chain to launch tokens, there will be new projects such as Cronos zkEVM, GRVT and the new project switching to zkSync is Lens Network.
Matter Labs representatives expressed confidence in the airdrop, stating that only 1% of the wallets passed the condition of needing to re-check the sybil ability.

Reactions after the airdrop announcement

Data related to the wallets that won the airdrop was revealed, in which the number of users by token received is as follows:

·      0-1k: 90937 users
·      1k-5k: 477996 users
·      5k-10k: 63582 users
·      10k-20k: 26871 users
·      20k-50k: 18517 users
·      50k-100k: 12657 users
·      100k: 155 users

These numbers lead to some basic information:

·      Average number of tokens users receive per wallet: 4,924 ZK
·      75% of users received less than or equal to 3,252 ZK
·      The actual maximum number of tokens received was 160,495 belonging to bobjiang.eth
·      The standard deviation of 11,887 shows high variability and large differences between the number of tokens received across wallets.

The maximum amount per wallet is around 100,000 ZK which is relatively large compared to the number of wallets received and the total airdrop token supply. Therefore, after the news about the number of airdrop tokens spread, the community immediately reacted to the price:

On the Aevo pre-market, the price of ZK has decreased from the pre-airdrop level of 0.6 - 0.8 USD to ~0.3 - 0.4 USD.

Pre-market price on Aevo

At Whales Market's OTC pre-market market, ZK's OTC price also dropped sharply from about 0.8 USD to ~0.27 - 0.3 USD after information related to the airdrop. The reason for this is that the large number of airdrops on many wallets leads to the community evaluating the token value to decrease.

However, these are just OTC and pre-market markets, the value of the ZK token will be officially decided after the project is listed on the floor around next week. Currently, ZK has been listed on Bybit, and it is likely that the next major exchanges will be announced in the near future.
In fact, indicators related to the performance of the ZKsync network have decreased quite significantly after the anticipated snapshot date (1 year anniversary). The number of bridges loaded into ZKsync and the transaction volume on ZKsync are in a decreasing trend.
According to DefiLlama, DeFi Protocols on ZKsync have a TVL of 133 million USD, lower than some other zkEVM projects such as Linea (653 million USD), Scroll (156 million USD), zkLink Nova (312 million USD) or competitors. Direct Starknet ($285 million).

summary

ZKsync has launched tokens after many days of waiting. This airdrop has a relatively large difference in the number of tokens per wallet. The value of the ZK token on the pre-market is decreasing significantly, ZKsync's network indicators are also facing competition from other large projects. Let's look forward to the impact of the ZK token on the ecosystem.