June’s airdrop craze: from LayerZero to ZkSync
In June, the blockchain world ushered in a wave of airdrops. Following LayerZero, ZkSync took over and launched an airdrop event. However, unlike LayerZero’s strict witch screening, ZkSync adopted a more relaxed standard, which triggered strong criticism from the community in terms of fund setting and project rules.
Despite the constant controversy, ZkSync token ZK is still listed on exchanges such as Binance and Bitget. The fluctuation of token prices has pushed ZkSync to the forefront of public opinion. ZkSync, which is hailed as the "last hope" of Ethereum's L2 technology, failed to meet user expectations.
Airdrop expectations and constant controversy
Backed by top capital, Matter Labs has raised $258 million through five rounds of financing since 2018. In this context, users are full of expectations for its token airdrops. However, the fund retention threshold and complex multiplier effect of ZkSync airdrops have caused widespread controversy, and a large number of ordinary users have returned disappointed.
Community reaction and exchange actions
The airdrop announcement further intensified the community conflict. The project party decided the airdrop rules on its own, and the final right of interpretation belongs to the project party. This behavior that does not conform to the spirit of Web3 has caused strong dissatisfaction. Despite this, the airdrop application on June 17 still attracted a large number of users. In just 2 hours, more than 225,000 addresses received 45% of the airdrop tokens.
Despite the community's call for a boycott, exchanges such as Binance, Bithumb, and Bitget still launched ZK tokens. The price of ZK tokens quickly fell, but the exchanges still chose to launch them for the needs of traffic and market share.
Enlightenment of airdrops and future prospects
ZkSync's airdrop activities provide many inspirations. In the future, airdrops may pay more attention to factors such as fund retention, balance and retention time, and the threshold for individual airdrops will gradually increase. The surge in witch addresses also provides a negative example for other projects. How to balance witch prevention and fair distribution has become an important issue.
For ZkSync, airdrops are just the beginning. Ecological construction and profitability are its future focus. Although its TVL and Gas revenue have increased, there is a lack of top DAPPs and its revenue capacity has declined. The future challenge is to enhance the vitality of the ecosystem and profitability, but time is not enough.
