Early users recognized ZKsync’s potential to expand personal freedom and dove in, whether that was on ZKsync Lite, trying native account abstraction, bridging in their assets, or using new dApps. That trust needs to be recognized. Putting ZK into the hands of people that share the same vision will ensure that the ZKsync protocol will continue to embody the ZK Credo.

That’s why two-thirds (~67%) of ZK will go to the community. 17.5% of the overall supply will be distributed through a one-time airdrop. The rest will be distributed over time, through ecosystem initiatives, managed by the ZKsync Foundation, and the ZK Nation governance process, to support a growing ecosystem as new users come onchain.

The remaining supply is allocated as follows: 17.2% to investors and 16.1% to the Matter Labs team. These ZK tokens are locked for the first year and then unlock over the course of 3 years, between June 2025 to June 2028. 

Power the community

A 17.5% airdrop to 695,232 wallets is the largest distribution of tokens to users amongst major rollups. Airdropped tokens do not have any vesting or lock up periods, and are fully liquid on day one. This amount is larger than the locked allocations for the Matter Labs team (16.1%) and its investors (17.2%).

Awarding more tokens in the airdrop than to the Matter Labs team and investors is more than a symbolic decision for the community. When the ZKsync governance system launches in the coming weeks, the community will have the largest supply of liquid tokens to direct protocol governance upgrades.

Reward real people

A well-designed airdrop rewards community members that actively participate in a network. With 6 million unique addresses on ZKsync Era, it’s tempting to eliminate bot swarms by applying strict sybil criteria. But sybil detection often cuts out real users with arbitrary filters. This was an incomplete approach for the ZK airdrop.