zkSync token issuance overview, token distribution, airdrop details, and collection steps

On June 11, 2024, the community-focused zk-rollup L2 zkSync finally announced the token ZK distribution details and airdrop details.

1. ZK Token Distribution Details

The total supply of ZK tokens is 21 billion. The token contract is deployed on zkSync Era, and the contract address is 0x5A7d6b2F92C77FAD6CCaBd7EE0624E64907Eaf3E.

66.6% of the total supply of ZK is allocated to the community: 17.5% of the total supply of ZK (approximately 3.675 billion) will be allocated to the community in a one-time airdrop ; the remainder (49.1%) will be distributed over time through the ecosystem program managed by the ZKsync Foundation and the ZK Nation governance process to support the growing ecosystem as new users come on-chain.

33.3% of the total supply is allocated to investors and the Matter Labs team: 17.2% to investors; 16.1% to the Matter Labs team . These ZK tokens are locked for one year and then unlocked over 3 years, from June 2025 to June 2028.

2. ZK Airdrop Overview

According to official information from Matter Labs, 17.5% of the total supply of ZK will be airdropped to the community at one time, and the airdropped tokens will not have any vesting or lock-up period and will be fully circulated on the first day.

There are two ways for the crypto community to obtain this 17.5% airdrop of approximately 3.675 billion ZK.

• 89% airdropped to users: ZKsync users who conduct transactions on ZKsync and reach the activity threshold.

• 11% airdropped to contributors: individuals, developers, researchers, communities, and companies that contribute to the ZKsync ecosystem and protocol through development, advocacy, or education — regardless of their activity on ZKsync.

Airdrop eligibility and allocation are based on a snapshot of ZKsync Era and ZKsync Lite activity taken at 0:00 UTC on March 24, 2024, marking the first anniversary of the ZKsync Era mainnet launch.

According to official news, 695232 Brother Wallet meets the air investment qualifications.

3. User Airdrop Rules and Collection Steps

Step 1. Eligibility Check and Points

Community members can check eligibility at claim.zknation.io and will be able to claim their tokens starting next week until January 3, 2025 .

Every address that has transacted on ZKsync Era and ZKsync Lite will be checked against eligibility criteria that identify people who have taken the time to carefully explore ZKsync. Every address must have at least one credit to be eligible for the airdrop.

Points Rules

Step 2: Allocation

After a wallet's eligibility is determined, its allocation is calculated based on the crypto assets transferred into ZKsync Era. The formula adjusts the address' allocation based on how much assets the address has in ZKsync Era (in wallets and DeFi) and how long those assets have been in ZKsync Era. Each address's value scaling allocation then increases with each additional point they earn. The more points earned, the larger the final allocation, up to a maximum of 100,000 ZK.

Value scaling process :

1. First, calculate the daily USD balance of crypto assets held by an address, including wallet balances or crypto assets sent to DeFi protocols.

2. Next, to emphasize the utility of crypto assets at work (vs. sitting idle in a wallet), crypto assets in DeFi are valued at 2x their nominal value.

3. Finally, the time-weighted average balance of each wallet is calculated by adding the daily balances and dividing by the total number of days during the snapshot period. The snapshot period from the ZKsync Era public mainnet launch on March 24, 2023 to March 24, 2024 is 366 days.

Example:

Alice sent $100 in crypto to ZKsync Era 250 days before the snapshot. 50 days later, she sent another $100 in crypto and kept it in her wallet until the snapshot was taken.

Alice's time-weighted average balance (TWAB) is calculated as follows:

Step 3. Multiplier

Each address can earn multipliers based on activity that indicates human behavior or a high likelihood of contribution to ZKsync. These multipliers apply to both ZKsync Era and Lite eligibility and allocations.

These multipliers include:

• Save one of the following ZKsync native NFT collections in the snapshot: Dudiez, Hue, Moody Mights, Webears, ZKPENGZ, zkSkulls, or zkVeggies. These seven collections were selected based on their average trading price of at least $25 and total trading volume of $20,000 in the 30 days before the snapshot.

• Hold at least $50 of one of the following ZKsync native ERC-20 tokens at the time of the snapshot: AAI, HOLD, KOI, MEOW, MUTE, RF, ZF, ZORRO. Similar to the seven eligible NFT projects above, the tokens of the top seven projects ranked by market capitalization at the time of the snapshot. Eight tokens are included because KOI and MUTE are the same project.

• A smart contract wallet created through ZKsync Era native account abstraction.

• Hold at least 50% of the ARB/OP/ENS airdrop for more than 90 days after claiming it.

• Interacted with an eligible Ethereum smart contract at least twice in the top 1,000 addresses. An eligible contract is one that has spent at least 100 ETH in transaction fees.

After step 3, each address will be allocated tokens. Addresses must meet a minimum requirement of 450 ZK and a maximum of 100,000 ZK . Tokens from addresses with less than 450 ZK are recycled back to the pool. Excess tokens from addresses with more than 100,000 ZK are also recycled back to the pool. These tokens are then redistributed to bring the minimum allocation to 917 ZK .

Step 4: Sybil Detection

At this point, the vast majority of witches have been naturally eliminated through qualification and distribution criteria. Industrial leechers play a destructive game. They give little and gain a lot, like parasites sucking the blood and sweat of the community. The human-centered approach subverts this asymmetry and benefits real people. It recognizes and rewards users who have contributed a lot to the community and added value.

At the end of the distribution process, each wallet goes through an additional sybil detection step, which eliminates the most obvious swarm attacks. It intentionally uses a very conservative heuristic framework to avoid accidentally penalizing real people. This approach can solve the problem of some complex bots getting through, but value scaling ensures that their token allocations remain small.

Step 5: Minting, Claiming, and Delegating

Eligible wallet users will be able to mint and claim their ZK tokens starting next week until January 3, 2025.

Eligible GitHub developers and ZKsync GitHub discussion helpers must link their addresses to their accounts before 00:00 CEST on June 25th to claim.

External projects, protocol guilds, and ZKsync native project contributors will be able to claim starting June 24, 2024.

With ZKsync's native account abstraction, there is no need to pay gas to claim ZK.

Once claimed, token holders can participate in the governance of the ZKsync protocol and self-delegate or delegate their token voting power to representatives they believe will continue to promote individual freedom for all.

4. Contribution-based airdrops

ZKsync native project: 215.25 million tokens

Directly distributed to contributors and vaults of ZKsync native projects built on ZKsync Era, including DeFi protocols, ZK chains, NFT collections, marketplaces, infrastructure, games, and more.

A total of 67 projects:

Builders: 86,895,375 tokens

Distributed to individuals, developers, researchers, communities and companies that contribute to the ZKsync ecosystem and protocol through development, advocacy or education.

On-chain community: 102.375 million tokens

Allocate to a small, experimental on-chain community exploring new ways to organize using tokens and NFTs.

5. ZK Airdrop Principles

The official blog of zkSync also explained the principles of ZK airdrops. They believe that the community is everything, and that airdrops should be given to real users rather than witches, and how to treat whales, etc.

Community is everything Powering the community

17.5% of the total ZK supply was airdropped to 695,232 wallets, the largest number of tokens distributed to users among all major rollups. The airdropped tokens have no vesting or lockup period and are fully circulated on day one. This amount is higher than the locked allocations of the Matter Labs team (16.1%) and its investors (17.2%).

The number of tokens awarded in the airdrop is larger than the Matter Labs team and investors, making this more than just a symbolic decision for the community. When the ZKsync governance system launches in the coming weeks, the community will have the largest liquid token supply to guide protocol governance upgrades.

Rewarding real people

A well-designed airdrop rewards community members who actively participate in the network. With 6 million unique addresses on ZKsync Era, it is easy to eliminate bots by applying strict sybil criteria. But sybil detection often uses arbitrary filters to exclude real users. This is an incomplete approach for ZK airdrops.

The ZK airdrop focuses on identifying real users using a human-centric approach. A wallet’s on-chain history can reveal a lot about its owner’s habits. Real people tend to be risk-takers, especially those who feel like part of a community. They spend time on-chain, impersonating, trading, trying new protocols, and holding speculative assets. Bots and opportunists are the opposite. Bots take fewer risks with minimal effort as they try to fit in and extract value from a community.

Whale addresses can airdrop up to 100,000 ZK

Real humans are involved. They bring assets together, which eventually flow into dApps and DeFi protocols, becoming the lifeblood of a high-liquidity ecosystem. Users should be rewarded accordingly based on their contribution to ZKsync's success.

But there are limits. It is easy for a whale to get a large allocation without any limits and then run away. ZK allocation is a maximum of 100,000 tokens per address airdropped. By limiting the number of whales, the ZK token airdrop rewards community members who contribute to ZKsync in a fair way.