“I Didn’t Hear No Bell”: Tactics for ZKsync’s 2nd Round

Token price down bad! ZK farmers REKT! A handful of farmers are defiant, barely standing on their feet and are stating that they “didn’t hear no bell”. If you also have the courage to continue with ZK and refuse to hear any bell, it could be handsomely rewarded. Read on to find out how you can step in the ring for a 2nd round.

First, let’s recap: Round 1 dropped just over 3.6 billion ZK (which is the native token of ZKsync that was airdropped to users in June). That leaves just over 10.3 billion ZK tokens that are guaranteed to be distributed to users in the near future. And there’s potentially even more that can be earned from protocols that share their tokens from airdrop #1.

Three different tactics will be explained that will help you get the most out of the 10.3 billion ZK tokens that are left:

1. Governance drops: HODL and delegate (6.135B ZK tokens)
2. Protocol initiatives from airdrop #1 (~26.7M ZK confirmed so far; potentially up to 1.2B ZK)
3. Ecosystem initiatives (4.179B ZK tokens)

Governance Drops: HODL and Delegate

The first and easiest way to position for ZK round 2 is to HODL your allocation and delegate for governance.

The ZK token blog post mentions:

“The rest 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 come on chain.”

From this, it can be deduced that another airdrop will occur, most likely for users who never sold their ZK and delegated to governance. But the governance drop could also apply to any address that delegates a certain amount of tokens for a specified period of time.

If you weren’t eligible for airdrop #1, buy at least 971 ZK tokens, HODL and delegate for governance. Do it urgently and see it as a long-term investment in ZKsync as an ecosystem. Why?

Because it’s very likely that ZKsync will rerun the playbook from Optimism’s airdrop #2 and #3.

If you haven’t delegated your ZK yet, you can do it here.

As a result, you should HODL and delegate at least 917 ZK tokens. Didn’t receive the first drop? Buy and delegate a minimum of 917 ZK. With a current price of around ~$0.17, 917 ZK amounts to around $156.

As a refresher, Optimism dropped OP tokens to active users in May 2022. Then in February 2023, after more than 90 governance proposals were voted on, a surprise airdrop #2 was announced. Anyone actively engaged in governance by delegating tokens received up to 5,000 OP! The 2nd round rewarded users based on “token days delegated”, using the following threshold:

Number of tokens delegated x Days delegated > 2,000

For example, a user who delegated 50 OP for governance only had to do so for at least 41 days to be eligible, since 50 x 41 > 2,000. Multipliers were also awarded for addresses that had delegated the minimum allocation from airdrop #1 for at least 200 days, as well as those that had a larger amount of OP tokens delegated.

Delegating for governance was rewarded yet again with airdrop #3 on September 18th, 2023. Again, the allocation was determined by the ‘token days delegated’, but this time with an upper limit of 10,000 OP airdropped per address!

The main takeaway is that ZKsync is very likely to do something similar to Optimism and there may be multiple rounds of governance-related airdrops. We predict that in the next 12 months, there’ll be at least one ZK airdrop that’s related to governance. It’s very likely the same criteria will be used: a certain threshold set for ‘token days delegated’.

To position for the governance portion of a ZK round 2:

• If you don’t HODL ZKsync’s token already, buy at least 971 ZK and delegate for governance.
• Depending on how bullish you are on ZK, buy and delegate more tokens to active governance participants for as long as possible to earn a potentially larger allocation in the 2nd round.

Protocol Initiatives from Airdrop #1

The other ways to qualify for more ZK are through the ecosystem and protocol initiatives which could total a maximum of 5.397 billion ZK: up to 1.218B from ZKsync native protocols that received the airdrop #1 and 4.179B from ZKsync as part of ecosystem initiatives.

That’s the 5.8% from the pie chart shown below, plus the 19.9% for the ecosystem initiatives in the previous pie chart.

But, in practice, the actual number of ZK up for grabs will be somewhat lower.

Not all ZKsync native protocols are going to share their entire allocation with users. And some are not even sharing any at all! So how much of that 5.8% of the token supply flows into the hands of users is unknown at the moment.

Only 8 projects have so far confirmed that 100% of their allocation from airdrop #1 will be shared with their communities, amounting to almost 29.2 million ZK. Izumi Finance and PancakeSwap have already started distributing their tokens to users, leaving approximately 24.3 million ZK.

Some of the protocols that have committed 100% to users include:

• Tevaera: 30% of their ZK tokens have already been distributed to top players who didn’t receive the ZK airdrop. The remaining tokens are dedicated to rewards for all Tevans who participate in future initiatives.
• Syncswap: No plans made public yet. Provide liquidity and swap regularly.
• Koi Finance: No plans made public yet. Provide liquidity, buy and lock their token, and swap regularly.
• GRVT: Participate in their reward program.
• Reactor Fusion: 50% was distributed to RLP Season 0 participants, The remaining 50% will be used to incentivise borrowers and lenders until September 15th.
• PancakeSwap: 53.5% was distributed to veCAKE holders and past users. The ZK tokens left over will be used to reward LPs and traders until June 2025.
• Vest: No plans made public yet. Provide liquidity and make 2-3 trades per week to potentially become eligible.

Other projects have hinted at rewarding users, but haven’t made a full commitment to give their communities 100% of their allocations. These are Kelp DAO (use rsETH on ZKsync) and EtherFi (bridge/use weETH on ZKsync once it launches).

DeFi heavyweights with high TVL and adoption like Aave, Ethena, Lido, Lens, Curve, Cronos and Frax Finance got the largest ZK ecosystem allocations. Taken together, these projects account for 47.48M ZK. Interact with these protocols once they launch on ZKsync and monitor their socials for any announcements. It’s likely that the majority, if not all, of these ZK tokens will be used to boost the APRs for liquidity providers. Unless you can provide a lot of liquidity ($50K-$100K+), it’s best to focus on more niche projects that reward users with airdrops that are transaction based or depend on metrics other than liquidity, such as GRVT, Tevaera, and/or zkCandy.

Ecosystem Initiatives

Ecosystem initiatives can be grouped into two speculative categories, rewarding users who are:

1. New users of Elastic chains
2. Loyal ZKsync users

A total of 4.179B ZK tokens will be distributed by the ZKsync Foundation to projects, then from projects to users.

New Users of Elastic Chains

Perhaps the most important ecosystem initiative will be the launch of various Elastic chains. Elastic chains are basically a network of different zkRollups that are interoperable with one another.

Several important implementations to keep an eye on in the upcoming months are:

• Lens Network (and mint your Lens profile if you haven’t got one already!)
• Cronos zkEVM
• GRVT
• zkCandy
• ZERO
• Sophon

Using Optimism again as a case study, Elastic chains are basically ZKsync’s take on the Superchain (OP Stack chains like Base and Mode). The emergence of Optimism’s Superchain, a network of chains built using the OP Stack also gave rise to new airdrop farming opportunities and tokens, such as MODE.

There’s a high likelihood that each Elastic chain launch will bring us a new airdrop farming opportunity, with confirmed token drops for GRVT and zkCandy. However, there’s less clarity on airdrops or tokens from other Elastic chains.

Loyal ZKsync Users

Since many farmers have dumped their ZK tokens and departed from ZKsync in search of other opportunities, a smaller pool of players remain.

With less competition and sybil activity, it’s beneficial to maintain an active on-chain footprint on ZKsync. Also, qualifiers for future airdrops may be relaxed to reward the genuine and loyal user base, especially now that most sybil farmers should be elsewhere.

Daily active addresses are at a 14-month low and transaction counts are also falling. The severely sharp decline is exactly what you want to see if you’re planning to farm ZK’s round 2.

Source: https://www.growthepie.xyz/fundamentals/daily-active-addresses

When looking at the on-chain data, one conclusion that follows: the crowd’s consensus is that the ZK airdrop is done, it’s time to move on to other opportunities and never look back. At a first glance, the mercenary element seems to have focused elsewhere, rather than continuing on with ZKsync.

Despite this outflow of active users, the potential for ZKsync to benefit from the so-called “Lindy effect” is high. ZKsync’s mission and vision are closely related to security and privacy, and very much closer in ethos to the roots of Bitcoin and Ethereum as compared to many other projects in our view, this is another good reason to hang around for further rounds.

This is excellent news for people who intend to continue with ZKsync, or want to start farming the 2nd round. Genuine on-chain usage after the hype has died down and commitment to the protocol’s success could be signalled by users that remain through their on-chain activities.

Here’s a list of important actions that should form the base of your strategy for ZK’s 2nd round:

• Transaction count: 2 or 3 transactions per week should suffice.
• Transaction volume: try to generate at least $100 in volume per week.
• Paymaster transactions: use paymaster supported tokens as gas when swapping at least 2 times per week. Paymaster is a feature unique to ZKsync that enables users to pay transaction fees in tokens other than ETH.
• dApp usage: pick 1-2 dApps and go HARD on them. Easiest ones are Tevaera for gamers and Vest for a passive strategy.
• Active weeks/months: use Owl.to’s daily check-in feature as a cost effective way to remain active on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Returning to the case study of Optimism airdrop #2, addresses with dApp transactions over 6 distinct months received a multiplier. So it could pay off to interact with dApps on zkSync every month for the rest of 2024.
• Number of unique contract interactions: aim for as many as possible. Try new protocols, use existing protocols you’ve never used before, mint NFTs on Rhino.fi and deploy your own ERC-20 token using Merkly.
• Spend more than $20 on gas fees: this was another multiplier for Optimism’s airdrop #2. Although it’s less likely to be a criteria for ZK round 2, it’s worth being aware of this potential multiplier.
• Follow Airdrops.io on X, join the Telegram channel and monitor the ZKsync airdrop page for any new protocols that launch.

“I Didn’t Hear No Bell”

Apart from the price of ZK, ZKsync itself is not down and out. There’s no better time to start farming further rounds and secure your share of the remaining 10.3 billion tokens. Never miss the big picture. ZKsync is an innovative project that has one of the largest mindshares in the crypto space and one of the fairest distributions seen in recent years.

To summarise, follow these steps to position for ZK’s 2nd round:

• HODL at least 917 ZK and delegate for governance. Delegate a larger amount for a potential multiplier and higher allocation.
• Pick at least 1-2 protocols that have committed 100% of their ZK tokens to their communities and become a power user.
• Follow ZKsync Foundation on X for updates on the ecosystem initiatives, which will likely be geared towards users of Elastic chains and dApps.
• Remain active on-chain: push at least 1-2 dApp transactions and 1-2 Paymaster swaps every month.

By following the tactics laid out above, readers should be well positioned for decent allocations in the near future.

Please note that this article does not constitute financial advice and is only presented for educational purposes. Always do your own research before buying cryptocurrencies and interacting with DeFi protocols.

Der Beitrag “I Didn’t Hear No Bell”: Tactics for ZKsync’s 2nd Round erschien zuerst auf airdrops.io.