Yesterday, ZKsync announced that they would be conducting an airdrop next week and have opened up the airdrop query process, marking the end of a 4-year journey. However, in comparison to other Layer 2 solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum, the percentage of eligible addresses for the ZKsync airdrop is significantly lower. Out of a total of 6,826,968 addresses on the ZKsync chain, only 695,232 addresses qualify for the airdrop, accounting for approximately 10%. According to community statistics, 9,203 addresses have received 23.9% of the total airdrop amount.
Subsequently, ZKsync officially released the airdrop guidelines, revealing that while the rules are not considered stringent, they are somewhat unconventional compared to standard practices. This has led to a surge in community skepticism regarding ZKsync’s motives.
Why are there so few eligible addresses for the airdrop? Prior to ZKsync’s official announcement of the airdrop rules, entities such as Nansen, TrustGo, and some crypto KOLs had made predictions regarding the number of participants eligible for the airdrop. For instance, TrustGo’s report indicated that 2.9 million addresses met the qualification criteria, even under strict standards. On the other hand, crypto KOL @DefiWimar estimated that there would be 1,650,351 addresses eligible for the ZKsync airdrop.
However, the final number of eligible addresses fell far short of these predictions. One of the main reasons behind this is that ZKsync established rather unconventional criteria compared to previous standards. For instance, a benchmark address provided by TrustGo, which ranked at 500,000 in their model, only met one of the 7 essential conditions set by ZKsync. Typically, airdrop eligibility is based on factors such as interaction activity, duration, and financial involvement. ZKsync, however, set 7 thresholds, including interacting with 10 contracts, providing liquidity, using Paymaster, transacting with 10 ERC 20 tokens, and holding a specific NFT, which excluded many potential participants.
While a report compiled by Odaily in April previously highlighted “Paymaster and LIBERTAS OMNIBUS COLLECTION as important differentiating standards,” this report was released after the snapshot had been taken.
After passing the initial threshold, ZKsync introduced an innovative fund retention condition as a core parameter for airdrop allocation calculations.
Caught in a whirlwind of controversy
While strict or somewhat unconventional rules might have been within the realm of acceptability for the community, a series of perplexing actions by ZKsync have fueled further skepticism.
Opaque decision-making
One of the key points of contention is ZKsync’s establishment of 7 mandatory criteria, with only one needing to be met to proceed to the subsequent calculation stage. However, ZKsync emphasized in their guidelines that meeting one or more of the airdrop criteria does not guarantee the legal right or entitlement to receive the airdrop, with all decisions related to airdrop distribution being at the discretion of the ZKSync Association. This wording greatly exacerbated dissatisfaction among the community, with many users questioning whether ZKsync’s actions were essentially a setup for front-running and usurping users’ rightful tokens.
Furthermore, at the end of the document, ZKsync stated that addresses meeting the airdrop criteria but having less than 450 tokens would have their allocated tokens reclaimed, sparking further community discord over uneven distribution.
Nansen clarifies its position
After numerous addresses were excluded from the airdrop, some users accused Nansen of conducting anti-witch measures and address screening on behalf of ZKsync, resulting in their loss of eligibility for the airdrop.
In response to these rumors, Nansen promptly released a statement clarifying that they had provided Matter Labs with data on specific wallets, such as whale users and known scammers. However, they denied engaging in anti-witch measures or making recommendations regarding airdrop allocations.
Suspicious addresses raise concerns, with no direct official response
Following the public release of the airdrop link, various screenshots of substantial token holdings began circulating in the community. However, a mysterious address, 0xF1802d9a70Bdc6F6EffD65d44b33226eE0E6A821, raised direct suspicions within the community. In the ZKsync regular user airdrop, the maximum token allocation is 100,000 tokens, yet this address received 564,000 tokens. Apart from this address, there were several instances of low-activity addresses receiving disproportionately high token allocations circulating within the community.
In response, neither the official ZKsync account nor the ZKNation account provided any response. Eighty minutes later, the zkSwap Finance ecosystem came forward to clarify that the address in question belonged to zkSwap and was allocated project development tokens by ZKsync. zkSwap emphasized that these tokens would be used for protocol and community development, somewhat alleviating the concerns.
However, not all questions were answered, as many known witch addresses that had been identified previously still received the ZKsync airdrop, including the Arbitrum witch from over a year ago and the recent LayerZero witch.
According to witch hunter Artemis, in a post on X platform, a witch user who had participated in the Arbitrum airdrop and profited $4.2 million still qualified to receive nearly 1,000,000 ZK tokens with over 3,000 wallet addresses.
Subsequent investigations by Artemis revealed that some front-runners obtained over 2 million ZK tokens by depositing identical Ethereum funds on the same day, with each wallet receiving an average of 15,000 ZK tokens. What’s more, almost all accounts were flagged on @LayerZero_Labs’ witch list.
However, similar to the situation with zkSwap, official accounts did not provide any responses to these queries, with only ZKsync’s CEO, Alex, continuously retweeting positive comments about the airdrop.
Resistance continues unabated
ZKsync’s silence has further fueled resistance within the community, with calls today urging major exchanges not to list ZK (ZKsync) tokens. The notion of returning the ZK name to Polyhedra has gained traction, but the likelihood of ZKsync heeding community feedback and revising the airdrop rules and scope is close to nil.
Looking back at the overall “interaction” process, with Starknet’s 0.005 ETH threshold and ZKsync’s fund retention calculation rules, the chances of receiving significant airdrop rewards simply through interaction frequency and duration are diminishing. The financial thresholds required are increasing, ultimately leading to a system akin to a financial scoring mechanism. The golden age of interaction may be drawing to a close for ZKsync.