Author: Mia, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
The way of interaction between project owners and communities, which the crypto community once prided itself on, is facing a crisis.
Interaction, on-chain contribution, and airdrops were once the characteristics of the crypto community.
After numerous airdrop rules, ZKsync struck a blow to this traditional way of interaction that balances trust with a statement that "all decisions related to airdrop allocation are made at the sole discretion of the ZKsync Association."
Previously, when facing questions about “airdrops”, Taiko’s co-founder also claimed: “The rules are not transparent because transparency cannot resolve differences.”
Star project owners seem to increasingly treat airdrops as a power to allocate resources—something they can use arrogantly without bearing the consequences, rather than a mutually beneficial interaction between community users and project owners.
We are worried that the spirit of decentralization, transparency and fairness in crypto is fading away.
Only one in ten addresses received the airdrop
Since the LayerZero anti-witch short was hit hard last month, the Maoquan community suffered another Waterloo.
On June 11, ZKsync announced that it will conduct an airdrop next week and open airdrop inquiries, finally arriving at an answer to its four-year interaction. Official disclosures show that there are 695,000 qualified addresses on the ZKsync chain, accounting for about 10% of the total 6.827 million addresses, far lower than the 2.05 million to 2.9 million address range predicted in the TrustGo report.
According to community statistics, 9,203 addresses received 23.9% of the total airdrop.
After four years of waiting, all they got was a waste of time. Many users posted their unfortunately annihilated experiences on X.
ZKsync has always been the white moonlight of the “money-grabbing party” because it has both a celebrity founder and celebrity capital.
A community big V said, "Some people quit their jobs to do ZKs, some sold their houses to do ZKs, and some took out loans to do ZKs. They have forever lost the qualifications to start an account and increase the volume, and have completely failed." It's like being betrayed in a four-year relationship, "paying three years' salary and countless late-night warmth", but in return the goddess' ZKS left.
Airdrops are decided by the Association at its sole discretion
For conventional airdrops, the core criteria for airdrops are usually the level of activity, duration, and amount of funds involved in the interaction. The ZKsync airdrop rules set a total of 7 thresholds:
1. The conditions for the Era mainnet are to interact with 10 non-token smart contracts
2. Payers who have used at least 5 transactions on Era mainnet
3. 10 ERC 20 tokens have been traded on the Era mainnet
4. DEX and lending protocols tracked on the Era mainnet provide arbitrary liquidity
5. At least hold the magic lamp NFT
6. Active on ZKsync Lite for more than 3 months before mainnet
7. Donate to Gitcoin through the last round of ZKsync Lite
Overly strict rules are nothing surprising for the ever-changing market, but an airdrop clause has put the project party in the whirlpool of public opinion over the opaque rules.
ZKsync wrote on the airdrop claim interface, "Meeting one or more of the above airdrop criteria does not constitute a legal right or claim to receive an airdrop, and all decisions related to airdrop allocations are made at the sole discretion of the ZKsync Association."
This statement aroused dissatisfaction among community users, and many users raised questions.
A crypto community user said: “We can understand the strictness of the airdrop rules, but we cannot tolerate the project party’s reckless and arbitrary behavior.”
This clause completely excludes the right to determine the airdrop from the airdrop standards. Whether or not an airdrop can be obtained seems to depend entirely on the mood of the project party.
In addition, ZKsync also stated that the allocated tokens for addresses that meet the airdrop conditions but have less than 450 tokens will be recycled, which has also caused dissatisfaction among some small users.
"Rat trading" controversy
Although the time period is long and there are many tasks to be participated in, the community users have always had high expectations for ZKsync. If it is strict rules or some non-traditional practices, it is still within the acceptable range of the community. However, a series of puzzling actions taken by ZKsync recently have aroused more and more doubts and questions from community members.
Nearly 10% of the eligible airdrop addresses mean that most of the token shares are retained by the project party. Many users questioned this, believing that ZKsync's move is essentially to reduce market liquidity and secretly hide insider trading. In response, ZKsync is currently in a state of turning a deaf ear to this and has not made any positive response to the various questions raised by users.
On the contrary, as the insider trading scandal escalated, Nansen, who was responsible for ZKsync data review, began to actively distance himself from the matter.
Nansen officially stated in a post on X: “In the spirit of transparency, we want to clarify some misunderstandings about the ZKsync airdrop. We did provide Matter Labs with data on some specific wallet clusters, such as whales or known scammers. However, we did not (help ZKsync) conduct a witch review, nor did we provide advice on the allocation of the airdrop.”
In addition, NFT trading platform Element stated in the X platform that as the largest NFT market on ZKsync, the platform did not receive any ZK token airdrops.
All the blame is directed at ZKsync itself.
Every airdrop is accompanied by some people being happy and some being worried, and there are quite a few people who actually win the airdrop. Various airdrop screenshots began to circulate wildly on the Internet, as if to prove to the public from the side that "ZKsync's airdrop is fair and effective, but you just don't meet the requirements."
Bankless co-founder David Hoffman also began to speak out and said that according to the survey data obtained in Discord, most people expressed overall satisfaction with the ZKsync airdrop, and also identified the criticism on the X platform as robot speech.
The "ZKsync native project" Zyfi announced on the social platform that it received 1.642 million ZK tokens, which indirectly confirmed the effectiveness of the airdrop.
However, most of the professional freeloaders in the Chinese-speaking region were almost wiped out, and most of the studios were once again reduced to tools.
Anti-rat trading action
As the number of airdrop addresses dropped sharply and insider trading scandals escalated, the Anti-Insider Trading Alliance came into being.
ZKsync ecosystem NFT project zkApes announced on social platforms that it has formed an alliance with projects such as Element, Argent, and WOOFi. Its goal is to put pressure on ZK Nation and Matter Labs to resist insider trading and other behaviors.
So, will the dual pressure from ecological projects and users force ZKsync to make a new airdrop decision?
This answer has two sides. If ZKsync accepts the pressure and chooses to reform, it will undoubtedly acknowledge the existence of insider trading; but if it continues to maintain the status quo, the ZKsync ecosystem will most likely lose most of its users and developers.
In the airdrop track, the project party and the Mao Mao party have always been in a relationship of mutual game, but if the balance of power tilts towards any one party, it will endanger the interests of the other party. When the weight leans towards the project party, the project party can do whatever it wants, and the Mao Mao party becomes a tool.
From the recent Taiko to LayerZero, it is common to scold the project party because the airdrop is not as good as expected. The transparency of the airdrop rules should be the top priority in the project's decentralization process.
