Author: Asher Zhang
Since the beginning of this year, the game between the project party and the LuMao studio has been in full swing. Under the struggle for interests, no matter what the airdrop rules are, there are different voices. Recently, Blast airdropped, and its airdrop strategy was recognized by retail investors, but it backstabbed the big investors. So, what are the characteristics of Blast's airdrop strategy? What other L2 projects are worth paying attention to by retail investors in the future? It is worth noting that many Layer2 leading projects have been launched this year, but their performance has been mediocre. What are the reasons behind this?
Blast brings good news to retail investors, but it backstabs big investors
This year, several major projects such as ZK and ZRO have caused great suffering to the LuMao studios, and the insider trading scandal and large-scale witch cleansing activities have also been very lively. However, this airdrop of Blast actually brought good news to retail investors and small LuMao studios.
Blast's airdrop strategy does not check witches, and is largely committed to protecting the interests of retail investors, which has also won it a lot of market praise. At the end of June, Blast officially opened airdrop applications and announced its token economics. The total supply of BLAST is 100 billion, 50% of which will be airdropped to the community, of which the first phase of airdrops accounted for 17% of the total supply. In the first phase of Blast's airdrop, Blast point holders can be allocated 7 billion BLAST, gold point holders can be allocated 7 billion BLAST, and Blur Foundation can be allocated 3 billion BLAST. Most importantly, Blast airdrops do not check witches, which is really good news for studios and can help them recover a lot. According to community feedback, those who are serious or persistent in doing dapp tasks can basically get a few thousand points of gold points at least, and the cost is less than one Ethereum, which means that even if the cost is small, the worst return can be doubled.
Although Blast does not investigate witches, it has backstabbed the big players. In the airdrop announcement, Blast particularly emphasized that the airdrops of big players will be linearly attributed, that is, the top 0.1% of users (about 1,000 wallets) will linearly attribute part of the airdrop within 6 months. Judging from the current market trend, Bitcoin has led the market to fall, and BLAST is expected to be sold by retail investors in the short term. For big players, a large-scale sell-off at this time is actually not good for them, because most of the tokens of big players have not been released, and a large-scale sell-off at this time will undoubtedly damage their own interests. Blast's move is undoubtedly to let retail investors run first and big players stay behind, which has also caused a lot of criticism from big players.
The official website of Blast shows that the first user is @beijingduck2023. He said on Twitter that at the current price of $0.026, the BLAST he received in the first phase is only worth $1,664. Christian, co-founder of the crypto fund NDV, said that he deposited more than $50 million on blast and received 20,912,000 BLAST, worth about $540,000, but due to linear unlocking, he can only receive an airdrop of $100,000. Christian labeled blast a scam project and called its founder Pacman a "serial rug entrepreneur."
Which L2s are still worth paying attention to by retail investors?
Although the L2 projects launched recently are formulating increasingly complex airdrop restrictions, many projects are still mainly focused on protecting retail investors, and retail investors are still profitable. So, what other L2 projects are worth paying attention to after Blast?
Scroll
Scroll is the 8th largest L2 and the 3rd largest zkEVM L2 with significant improvements in transaction throughput, fee reduction, and overall scalability. Scroll TVL is approaching $1 billion, with a valuation of $1.8 billion in 2023, and has received investment from high-profile VCs such as Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Crypto, and Sequoia China. In April 2024, Scroll announced its "Scroll Sessions" reward activities, through which users can earn Scroll Marks, which is equivalent to points. Scroll recently ended Session Zero, where users could earn rewards by bridging assets like ETH and wstETH using native bridges or LayerZero, and Session One is about to begin, possibly supporting other assets and ways to earn points.
Zircuit
Zircuit is an upcoming zkEVM currently in the testnet stage that uses AI to enhance the security of the sorter. Investors include Dragonfly, Pantera, and Maelstrom. Zircuit has launched a points campaign where users can deposit assets such as ETH, LST, and LRT into its network. Currently, Zircuit has accumulated more than $2.5 billion in staked assets and attracted more than 1,000 applications for the "Build to Earn" program.
Reya和Zora
Reya Network is an upcoming L2 for trading optimization, supported by Framework, Coinbase, and Wintermute. Reya announced a liquidity reward activity, where users can provide funds to the liquidity pool through private accounts and receive rewards from trading spreads, funding fees, protocol fees, and liquidations.
ZORA is an NFT market protocol that allows creators to create, exhibit, and collect NFTs. ZORA also launched the Zora Network, a Layer 2 network based on OP Stack. With the launch of its own network, it is possible to airdrop governance tokens in the future.
Why Layer2 tokens are not performing as expected
Although many leading Layer2 tokens have been launched this year, the performance of these project tokens has been unsatisfactory. In addition to the high valuation of the project, what are the other reasons for the weak performance of Layer2 tokens?
From a technical perspective, the top projects in the L2 track have actually been launched this year. Although we have listed some projects with relatively high technical potential above, they actually only have relative advantages in certain technical fields. The key to the current Layer2 project lies in the development of the ecosystem.
At present, Arbitrum may become the biggest winner of Dencun upgrade, with the fastest growth of active users on the chain. This may be due to its full use of L3 advantages and its full attack in the field of Web3 games, which has attracted a large number of users. Arbitrum's ecological partners include: Azuki, ApeCoin, Xai and XPET. Optimism has expanded its territory through Op Stack, and there are many Layer2s built with Op Stack, among which the well-known ones are Base, opBNB, Zora Network, DeBankChain, etc. From the perspective of ecological development, the development of Zk system is relatively weak compared with Op system.
From the perspective of tokens, the leading Layer2 tokens were launched relatively late. Starknet and zkSync have just recently issued tokens, and a large number of tokens will be gradually unlocked. Although Arbitrum and Optimism have made some achievements in ecological construction, the ability of tokens to capture value is still very lacking. This has led to unsatisfactory performance of most Layer2 tokens. In addition to the reasons of Ethereum Layer2 tokens themselves, Bitcoin Layer2 has also caused a lot of funds to flee from Ethereum, which may be why Starknet announced its entry into Bitcoin Layer 2.
Summarize
From a technical perspective, the Layer2 leaders on Ethereum have already been launched one after another, which means that its technology is maturing and can at least meet the current on-chain needs; its next goal is still mainly ecological construction and continuous upgrading according to demand.
Judging from the data, many developers are beginning to seek to build Layer2 on Bitcoin, hoping to become the top Layer2 of Bitcoin. This move has both advantages and disadvantages. Bitcoin Layer2 technology is still in its early stages of development, and its opportunities are indeed greater. However, Bitcoin's underlying technology is slow to iterate, the block space is small, and Bitcoin itself does not have smart contracts. The interaction between Layer1 and Layer2 is inherently more difficult, and Bitcoin fundamentalism is also very opposed.
Although Ethereum Layer2 and Bitcoin Layer2 may be similar in many aspects, their future positioning is expected to be different, mainly due to the differences between the underlying layers of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum Layer2 is expected to be more popular in areas such as blockchain games or Web3 social networking. If Bitcoin Layer2 can better inherit the security of Bitcoin, it may be more popular in tracks such as DeFi.