Ethereum Layer2 solution zkSync and other Layer2 solutions
Optimism, Arbitrum and Starknet are collectively known as the "Layer 2 Four Heavenly Kings". From 2022 to 2024,
In January, Optimism, Arbitrum and Starknet completed their respective token airdrop activities.
As one of the representatives of zk-rollup, zkSync, which has not yet issued a token, has naturally attracted the attention of airdrop hunters, hoping to get generous returns from the airdrop. However, just after the official announcement of the token issuance, a series of scandals broke out one after another, questioning the black box operation, the airdrop was too centralized, and even wallets without transaction records could get airdrops...
This article summarizes for you the recent series of events that occurred between zkSync’s airdrop announcement and its official listing on the exchange.
On June 11, zkSync announced token economics and airdrop rules
On the 11th of this month, the zkSync community organization ZK Nation published a post on the X platform, announcing the $ZK token economics and the long-awaited $ZK airdrop rules, distribution and website query for ZK users.
zkSync published an article on its official website introducing ZK Nation, stating that ZK Nation is a community driven by a common goal to manage, protect and develop the zkSync protocol.
ZK Airdrop Allocation, Eligibility Criteria
According to a ZK Nation blog post, the ZK airdrop allocation accounts for 17.5% of the total supply. A total of 695,232 wallet addresses are eligible. There are two ways to qualify for the airdrop:
Users (89%): ZKsync users who transact on ZKsync and meet the activity threshold.
Contributors (11%): Individuals, developers, researchers, communities, and companies that contribute to the ZKsync ecosystem and protocol through development, advocacy, or education, regardless of their activity on ZKsync.
In addition, zkSync will check the transactions that the address has made in zkSync Era and zkSync Lite according to the eligibility criteria. Each address must have at least one point to be eligible for the airdrop, and each criterion has 1 point. The eligibility criteria are as follows:
zkSync Era has interacted with more than 10 smart contracts
Providing liquidity in DeFi protocols
Use paymaster at least 5 times
zkSync Era traded 10 different ERC20 tokens
Own the Libertas Omnibus NFT
Donate to Gitcoin in zkSync Lite
There was interaction with zkSync Era for at least 3 months before its launch
zkSync scandals continue to emerge
zkSync accused of having 12,000 addresses with zero interaction and airdrops
Crypp, a KOL on X, published a long research article on the 13th, raising three doubts:
Question 1:
On November 19, 2023, the zkSync Era network’s TVL increased by $44 million (from $106 million to $150 million).
Then in the next 3 months, it only increased by $17 million. On January 9, 2024, TVL suddenly decreased by $40 million (167 million).
Is this just a coincidence?
Doubt 2: Wallets without transactions also meet the airdrop conditions.
12,725 no-transaction wallets. Some of them meet ridiculous criteria, such as "holding a fat penguin or Milady Maker NFT" and "claiming BONSAI
Season 1 Airdrop", while some wallets are completely empty and have no transactions (0x65f8dfc419b418ae82f289059d038428d038cd9a)
Question 3: ZKsync frequently mentions "community" and "decentralization". However, 71,538 wallets received 15.6% of the total token supply (a total of 17.5% was allocated to the airdrop). In other words, there is no decentralization in the airdrop, and a large number of tokens will be in the hands of a small group of people.
Witch Hunter: ZK airdrop exposes a large number of insider trading addresses
According to the feedback from witch hunter Artemis on the social platform X earlier, a large number of insider trading was suspected to have appeared in the zkSync airdrop list:
This witch is swimming in money! She received $4.2 million worth of tokens in the Arbitrum airdrop, and now she’s coming for your money!
According to Artemis, thousands of wallets received more than 2 million ZK tokens by depositing the same ETH on the same day. On average, each wallet received 15,000 ZK tokens. More importantly, almost all addresses were also marked on the witch list reported by the cross-chain platform LayerZero:
All wallets were created within the 5-day period between December 1, 2022 and December 6, 2022, and all wallets have very specific deposit times and amounts up to a certain decimal precision.
The most obvious failure to mask is decimal precision, which is set in the script.
This makes people question whether the official control over witches is strict enough and unfair.
$ZK OTC price plummets after official announcement of inquiry
The community’s doubts gradually fermented after the ZK token airdrop inquiry was launched. The ZK price on the over-the-counter platform AEVO nearly halved from the level of 0.6 US dollars on June 11, falling by more than 45% in a single day.
ZK OTC Price｜Source: Aevo
$ZK will be officially available for claiming at 15:00 on the 17th
The ZKsync airdrop is open for claiming at 15:00 on the 17th (Taiwan time). Users can go to claim.zknation.io to claim. The claim period is until January 3, 2025.
Listed on Binance exchange
At that time, Binance Exchange
An announcement was released at 10:00 on the 17th, stating that ZK would be launched at 16:00 on the same day (later delayed to 18
Click to list) and open spot trading pairs: ZK/BTC, ZK/USDT, ZK/FDUSD and ZK/TRY. In order to appease user emotions, Binance plans to issue 100,000 tokens to eligible users.
200 ZK.
After Binance announced the launch of ZK, Bitget and Bybit also launched PoolX staking activities and reward pool sharing tasks to attract users to participate and obtain ZK rewards...
zkSync once fell below $0.2
As for the price of the coin, $ZK has continued to fall since it was listed on Binance yesterday, and this morning it fell below the $0.2 mark. Although it has rebounded to $0.2137 at the time of writing, it is still lower than the pre-market price predicted by the market.
The community recently complained about the official inaction
In addition to the airdrop rules that sparked community anger, the lack of user rights protection and official inaction have gradually caused zkSync to lose community trust, including the following incidents
1. Previously, the Zksync lending protocol Eralend suffered a total loss of approximately US$3.4 million due to a flash loan attack. Not only did it fail to recover the stolen funds, but it also did not make corresponding compensation to the users. Zksync only issued a risk warning in the Chinese community after the project was sold to a Chinese team.
2. After the zkSync ecological lending platform xBank Finance suffered a loss of $550,000 due to a hacker attack and its liquidity was close to zero, although it stated that it was contacting the attacker to recover the user's funds through a white hat bounty, it also did not mention the issue of compensation for users.
3.
The decentralized entertainment platform ZKasino is transferring more than 10,000 ETH
Users’ pledged deposits were forcibly exchanged for platform coins. Afterwards, the authorities did not respond to the private modification of the rules and the whereabouts of the funds. The funds were transferred in batches. Currently, the Dutch Fiscal Investigation Bureau has arrested a suspect.
ZKasino was a suspect in the ZKasino fraud case and his 11 million euros of assets were seized. But ZKasino was also accused by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin
"Anti-counterfeiting", saying that the project did not use any ZK technology and was only hosted on the zkSync platform.
Faced with the severe damage to user interests, zkSync officials have never made relevant effective improvement measures, which also reflects its poor management of the ecosystem. The low cost of doing evil has become one of the important reasons for its chaos. Whether zkSync can regain the trust of community users and continue to grow its ecosystem in the future is worthy of our continued attention.
