The ZKsync Association has announced an airdrop of 3.675 billion ZK tokens to community members, beginning next week. This airdrop represents 17.5% of the total ZK token supply, which amounts to 21 billion tokens. Contributors will be able to claim their tokens starting on June 24, with the distribution running until January 3, 2025.
Once claimed, ZK tokens can be used for governance within the ZKsync protocol, allowing token holders to vote on protocol upgrades and pay network fees. ZKsync is currently the third-largest zero-knowledge proof-based Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, boasting over $750 million in assets, according to L2Beat.
Token Allocation
A recent blog post by ZKsync detailed the token allocation strategy. Of the entire token supply, 49.1% will be dedicated to various ecosystem initiatives, 17.2% will be reserved for investors, and 16.1% will go to Matter Labs, the company behind ZKsync. Tokens allocated to the team will be locked for one year, with gradual unlocking from June 2025 to June 2028.
“Awarding more tokens in the airdrop than to the Matter Labs team and investors is a significant decision for the community,” stated the press release. “As the ZKsync governance system launches in the coming weeks, the community will have the largest supply of liquid tokens to direct protocol governance upgrades.”
Airdrop Execution
The airdrop will involve 695,232 eligible wallets, based on activities recorded on ZKsync Era and ZKsync Lite as of March 24, 2024. The distribution will be split between users (89%) and contributors (11%), with a cap of 100,000 tokens per single address.
ZKsync employs a points system to determine the distribution of tokens. Points were awarded for various activities, including interacting with smart contracts, providing liquidity to DeFi protocols, and trading ERC-20 tokens. Activities on ZKsync Lite, such as donating to Gitcoin rounds, also earned points. Wallets allocated fewer than 450 ZK tokens will have their allocations recycled back into the pool to ensure a minimum of 917 ZK per wallet.
In March, ZKsync’s total value locked (TVL) peaked at $930 million. However, this figure has since decreased to $750 million, according to data from L2Beat.
