The ZKsync Association plans to airdrop 3.675 billion ZK tokens next week to early users and adopters of the Ethereum layer 2 network ZKsync.
This represents 17.5% of the total supply of 21 billion ZK tokens, ZKsync said on Tuesday. This will be a one-time airdrop and users can claim tokens starting next week until January 3, 2025, ZKsync said. Contributors can claim starting June 24th.
An additional 49.1% of the token supply will be distributed through ecosystem initiatives, with 17.2% allocated to investors and 16.1% to the Matter Labs team.
“Offering more tokens than the Matter Labs team and investors in the airdrop is more than a symbolic decision for the community,” the ZKsync association said in a statement. “When the ZKsync governance system launches in the coming weeks, the community will have the largest liquid token supply to direct protocol governance upgrades.”
ZKsync reveals details of its long-awaited airdrop.
ZKsync shortlisted 695,232 wallets for the airdrop, the project said. Airdrop eligibility and allocation was based on a snapshot of ZKsync Era and ZKsync Lite activity taken at 0:00 UTC on March 24, 2024, commemorating the one-year anniversary of the ZKsync Era mainnet launch.
17.5% of the ZK airdrop will be split between two community members: users (89%) and contributors (11%). Users are those who have transacted on ZKsync and have met the activity threshold. Contributors, on the other hand, are individuals, developers, researchers, communities, and companies who have contributed to the ZKsync ecosystem and protocol through development, advocacy, or education, regardless of network activity.
This is an analysis of the initial community airdrop of 17.5%. Image: ZKsync.
The remaining community allocations will be distributed over time through ecosystem initiatives managed by the ZKsync Foundation and the ZK Nation governance process to support a growing ecosystem as new users join the chain, ZKsync said.
Less than 0.5% of the supply is being allocated to what the project calls the experimental community. This includes wallets that received Degen and Bonsai airdrops due to their activity on decentralized social networks Farcaster and Lens, respectively. It also includes players who played Crypto the Game, which was recently acquired by Uniswap Labs, as well as NFT projects Pudgy Penguins and Milady Maker.
This is an analysis of ZK token distribution. Image: ZKsync.
The remaining supply will be allocated to investors and the Matter Labs team. ZK tokens will be locked for the first year and then unlocked over three years from June 2025 to June 2028.
The announcement confirms The Block’s report from last month that ZKsync was planning a token airdrop in mid-June, giving away a total of 21 billion tokens. There has also been a rebranding from zkSync to ZKsync.
How to calculate airdrop quota
Community airdrops are based on a points system. The wallet received points for activities such as interacting with 10 smart contracts in the ZKsync era, depositing liquidity into DeFi protocols, and trading 10 or more ERC-20 tokens. Points were also awarded for some activities on ZKsync Lite, such as donating to Gitcoin rounds or trading over the three months prior to the ZKsync Era mainnet launch.
After the points were allocated, each wallet was given an allocation based on the assets linked to the ZKSync Era. Addresses can receive multipliers based on their activity on ZKsync and the Ethereum mainnet.
After this process, tokens from addresses with less than 450 ZK tokens were recycled back into the pool. Those holding more than 100,000 tokens recycled their excess tokens. As a result, the minimum allocation for each wallet reached a maximum of 917 ZK.
Putting ‘real people’ first
In particular, airdropped tokens have no vesting or lock-up periods and are “fully liquid on day one.” “People are free to dispose of their tokens,” Alex Gluchowski, founder and CEO of Matter Labs, told The Block in an interview when asked if this could lead to selling pressure.
“This is a community governance airdrop,” Gluchowski said. “So we want the majority of recipients to participate in governance, delegate their tokens, and be active members of the community. If some of them don’t want to do that, it’s better for their tokens to go into the community. They actually have a deep interest in the protocol. These are the hands of those who have .”
ZK token distribution airdrops up to 100,000 tokens per address. “Because it’s not a whale-first airdrop,” Gluchowski said. “Because it is a community-first airdrop,” he added. He added that no one would be offended by this limit.
Gluchowski said Airdrop was designed in a way that “naturally puts people first and puts real people first.” He claimed that bots that did a lot of useless activity were filtered out from the airdrop.
Gluchowski acknowledged that it is really difficult to eliminate 100% of bots, but that a portion of the quota may go to bots.
Gluchowski emphasized that two-thirds of the allocation will go more to the community rather than to the team and investors. He used this to argue that for ZKsync, “community is everything.”
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