Original Author: Nancy, PANews
After years of waiting, Zora has finally issued its token, but the long-suffering community users were not met with the expected "big result". Upon opening their wallets, they found only a reward that could not even cover the gas fees, let alone a token with any utility. Momentarily, the community's emotions completely collapsed, and the on-chain reputation protocol Ethos unexpectedly became an outlet for users to vent their frustration. Zora's "failure scene" was permanently recorded on the chain, becoming a mark of trust breakdown.
Airdrop "Slaps" Early Users, Token Distribution Accused of Betraying the Community
Last month, Zora announced the upcoming launch of its native token ZORA, raising the community's expectations to the fullest. On the eve of the token release, Base officially released multiple tweets to hype Zora, successfully attracting attention, with memes flying everywhere and multiple data skyrocketing.
However, this airdrop ultimately turned into a disappointing "century failure". On April 23, Zora opened airdrop claims, stating that this airdrop would distribute 1 billion ZORA tokens to 2,415,024 addresses. Most airdrop tokens were allocated based on the first snapshot (from January 1, 2020, 8:00 to March 3, 2025, 22:00), with a smaller proportion allocated from the second snapshot (from March 3, 2025, 22:00 to April 20, 2025, 8:00), covering Zora's latest protocol Coins activities. The specific allocation was calculated based on users' activities on Zora and overall participation in the current and previous protocols, including but not limited to minting, trading, and referrals.
Simultaneously, the ZORA token was listed on Binance Alpha, with eligible users receiving 4,276 ZORA airdrops. However, the airdrop results angered many long-term Zora ecosystem participants, who received only a small number of tokens, insufficient even to cover gas fees.
Recent speculative participants and Binance Alpha users, on the other hand, easily claimed a large number of tokens. This severely unbalanced distribution method not only sparked widespread community anger but was also seen as a betrayal of early supporters. What further dissatisfied the community was that while the Zora airdrop snapshot was divided into two parts, the specific allocation criteria were never disclosed, lacking the necessary transparency.
Moreover, Zora faced strong community questioning due to its highly concentrated and opaque distribution ratio. According to the disclosed token economic model, community airdrop only accounts for 10%, while team, treasury, and strategic contributors are allocated up to 65%, with only a 6-month lock-up period before unlocking begins, and the specific unlocking pace was not detailed.
Additionally, Zora officially stated that the ZORA token is just a "just for fun" meme coin, carrying no technical or governance functions, mainly used for community rewards and ecosystem incentives. This positioning further triggered a series of community questions: If the token has no substantial utility, why does the team need such a high proportion? Why should the community believe ZORA has long-term value?
Under the accumulation of multiple disappointment emotions, Ethos's negative review function was seen as a channel for emotional value release, with community users leaving "negative reviews", causing Zora's credibility score to rapidly decline. Many users directly stated, "On-chain records are immutable, and malicious projects will be recorded in history".
Airdrop Progress Over Half, User Claim Rate Less Than 20%, Average Only $37
In terms of price performance, Binance data shows that ZORA briefly surged to $0.0466 after listing, then dropped to a low of $0.0172 the next day, with a maximum decline of nearly 63%, quickly cooling market enthusiasm.
Dune data shows that by the time of writing, over 514 million ZORA tokens have been successfully claimed. Among the top 50 addresses, over 190 million tokens were claimed, with an average of about 3.931 million tokens per address, valued at approximately $92,000 at the current price (around $0.0235), accounting for 36.9% of all claimed amounts. This indicates a clear dominance by top addresses in the airdrop distribution.
In terms of participating users, over 320,000 users have participated in claiming, with an average of 1,571.1 ZORA tokens per user, equivalent to about $37. This stark contrast highlights the extremely unbalanced distribution structure - large holders obtain massive airdrops, while ordinary users receive very limited allocations.
In terms of claim progress, about 51.42% of the total tokens have been claimed, but only 13.35% of eligible users have actually completed the claim, further indicating that the proportion of users actively performing the claim is very low, with most users preferring to abandon the claim.
User Engagement Significantly Drops, Transformation to On-Chain Social Sparks Controversy
Founded in 2020, Zora was initially positioned as an NFT marketplace protocol. Public data shows that the project has raised at least $52 million in funding, with investors including Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm, Haun Ventures, with the last round of financing valuing the company at $600 million. However, with the NFT market cooling and increased market competition, Zora gradually evolved to focus on on-chain social and creator economic ecosystems, including launching the "Coins" feature to automatically mint each social content (such as images, videos, text) into an ERC-20 token, and launching its own Layer 2 network, Zora Network.
Despite continuously exploring new narrative directions, Zora's overall ecosystem activity has significantly declined. According to Dune data, as of April 24, over 3.51 million smart contracts have been created on the Zora network, but daily contract creation has dropped from the early peak of 144,000 to about 13,000, less than a tenth of the peak; similarly, Zora network's cumulative transaction volume has exceeded 87.4 million, but daily transaction volume has dropped from the historical high of 3.338 million to about 428,000; while the total number of active addresses has reached 470,000, compared to the highest daily active users of about 259,000 last year, it is now only 50,900, showing a decline in user engagement.
In terms of revenue, defillama and Dune data show that Zora's cumulative revenue is only $5.4 million, with Zora Network's profit being only 527.74 ETH. This is also considered by the community to be far from the market expectations corresponding to its $600 million valuation.
Additionally, although Zora claims to have brought thousands of millions of dollars in revenue to creators, its on-chain experimental and tokenization narrative still sparks controversy. For example, Base protocol head Jesse Pollak recently praised Zora Coins' active users reaching a historic high, but ZachXBT criticized these tokens as "viruses" with a market cap not exceeding $5 million. Jesse acknowledged that most content is almost worthless, with only a few pieces of content being highly valuable, but ZachXBT questioned why creators would issue numerous tokens to dilute their brand. Jesse countered that on-chain creation would not dilute the brand, and good content would naturally spread, with the market and algorithms determining its value.
Overall, Zora is attempting to reshape itself through on-chain social interactions and tokenization narratives, but its inflated valuation and increasingly cooling ecosystem activity have already planted the seeds of a trust crisis. This insincere airdrop may become the final straw that breaks the community's confidence.
