Ethereum 's Layer2 solution zkSync, together with Optimism, Arbitrum and Starknet, which are also Layer2 solutions, are known as the "Four Kings of Layer2". From 2022 to February 2024, Optimism, Arbitrum and Starknet have completed their respective generations. Coin airdrop activity.
As one of the representatives of zk-rollup, zkSync, which has not issued coins yet, naturally attracts the attention of airdrop hunters, hoping to obtain generous returns from airdrops. However, just after the official announcement of the issuance of the currency recently, a series of black materials have been exposed one after another. It has been criticized as a black box operation, the airdrop is too centralized, and even wallets with no transaction records can receive the airdrop...
This article will sort out for you the recent series of events that occurred between zkSync’s announcement of airdrop 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 document on the
ZK Airdrop Allocation, Qualification Criteria
According to the ZK Nation blog article , the ZK airdrop allocation accounts for 17.5% of the total supply, and 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 reach the activity threshold.
- Contributors (11%): Individuals, developers, researchers, communities, and companies who contribute to the ZKsync ecosystem and protocol through development, advocacy, or education, regardless of their activities on ZKsync.
In addition, zkSync will check the transactions that the address has conducted 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. Each criterion has 1 point. The qualification 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 has traded 10 different ERC20 tokens
- Own the Libertas Omnibus NFT
- Donate to Gitcoin at zkSync Lite
- There has been interaction for at least 3 months before zkSync Era was launched.
zkSync black material serial explosion
zkSync was accused of having 12,000 addresses with zero interaction and airdrops
KOL Crypp on X published a long research article on the 13th, raising three doubts:
Doubt 1: On November 19, 2023, the TVL of the zkSync Era network increased by US$44 million (from US$106 million to US$150 million). Then over the next 3 months, only $17 million was added. On January 9, 2024, TVL was suddenly reduced by $40 million ($167 million to $127 million). Is this just a coincidence?
Doubt 2: Wallets without transactions are also eligible for airdrops. There are a total of 12,725 wallets without transactions. Some of them meet ridiculous criteria, such as "Hold a Fat Penguin or Milady Maker NFT" and "Claim BONSAI Season 1 Airdrop", while some wallets are completely empty with no transactions (0x65f8dfc419b418ae82f289059d038428d038cd9a) 
Doubt 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 airdrops, 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 rat warehouse addresses
According to earlier feedback from Witch Hunter Artemis on social platform
This witch is swimming in a sea of money! He once received $4.2 million worth of tokens in the Arbitrum airdrop, and now he’s coming to get your money again!
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, and more importantly, Almost all addresses are also marked on the witch list reported by the cross-chain platform LayerZero:
All wallets were created within the 5 days of December 1, 2022, to December 6, 2022, and all wallets have very specific deposit times and amounts up to a certain decimal precision.
Decimal precision is the most obvious failure mask, and is set in the script.
It makes people question whether the official control over witches is not strict and unfair.
$ZK OTC price plummets after official inquiry announced
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 is officially open for claim at 15:00 on the 17th
The ZKsync airdrop has been opened for claim 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 issued an announcement at 10:00 on the 17th that it would list ZK at 16:00 that day (later delayed to 18:00), and open spot trading pairs: ZK/BTC, ZK/USDT, ZK/FDUSD and ZK/TRY. In order to appease users’ emotions, Binance plans to distribute 200 ZK to qualified users.
After Binance announced the launch of ZK, Bitget and Bybit also launched PoolX staking activities and prize pool sharing tasks respectively to attract users to participate and obtain ZK rewards...
zkSync once fell below $0.2
As for the currency price, $ZK has continued to fall since it was listed on Binance yesterday. It once fell below the $0.2 level this morning. Although it rebounded to $0.2137 at the time of writing, it was still lower than the pre-market price previously predicted by the market.
Communities have recently complained about official inaction.
In addition to the anger caused by the airdrop rules, the previous inability to protect user rights and official inaction have gradually caused zkSync to lose the trust of the community, including the following incidents
1. The previous 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, it also failed to compensate users accordingly, and Zksync was only sold to China during this project. The team later issued a risk warning in the Chinese community
2. After the liquidity of the zkSync ecological lending platform xBank Finance was close to zero after a hacker attack caused a loss of 550,000 US dollars, although it stated that it was contacting the attackers to recover user funds through white hat bounties, it also had a negative impact on users. No mention was made of the issue of compensation
3. The decentralized entertainment platform ZKasino is forcibly converting more than 10,000 ETH user pledge deposits into platform coins. Afterwards, the official did not make any response to the private modification of the rules and the whereabouts of the funds, and also divided the funds. The Dutch Fiscal Investigation Bureau has arrested a suspect in the ZKasino fraud case and seized 11 million euros in his assets. However, ZKasino was also "counterfeited" by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, saying that the project did not use any ZK technology and was only hosted on the zkSync platform.
Faced with heavy losses to the interests of users, zkSync officials have never made relevant and effective improvement measures, which also reflects its poor management of the ecology. 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 deserves our continued attention.
