Ethereum L2 zkSync Era mainnet launch: which ecological projects are worth paying attention to?

The day after the Arbitrum airdrop, another Layer 2 project zkSync, which is jokingly called the Four Heavenly Kings, officially released its V2 network zkSync Era. Although zkSync officials emphasized that the initial release of Era would not come with tokens and that it might take about a year to achieve network decentralization, this did not dampen users' enthusiasm for the potential airdrop wealth effect. In the few days after it was officially opened to users, a large amount of funds poured into zkSync Era. According to Dune Analytics data, in less than three days after the release of zkSync Era, more than 64,000 independent wallets and more than 12,000 ETH were bridged from Ethereum to zkSync Era. This article will take stock of the dAPPs that have been launched on the zkSync Era mainnet to help everyone better understand the network ecology and achieve interaction.

(Data source: https://dune.com/gm365/era)

Bridge

Orbiter Finance

(https://www.orbiter.finance/)

Orbiter Finance is a third-party bridge that supports zkSync network cross-chain, and has not yet issued tokens. Unlike the official bridge, which does not yet support the conversion between zkSync Lite and Era, Orbiter not only supports the cross-chain between Ethereum, zkSync Lite and Era, but also supports the mutual transmission between dozens of public chains such as Polygon, Arbitrum One/Nova, Loopring and zkSync Era. When users cross chains, Orbiter will charge users fees including transaction and pre-withheld Gas. However, due to the recent surge in traffic and the restriction of RPC nodes, Orbiter stated that the current zkSync Era cross-chain service will be preferentially applicable to Orbiter-ZK-Pilots users (that is, users who have recently used zkSync Lite for cross-chain), and will be open to all users when the network is secure and stable in the future.

DeFi

Mute.io (https://mute.io/)

Mute is one of the first DEX platforms on the zkSync Era, and has launched the MUTE Token. Users can use the platform for trading, liquidity provision, Amplifier, bonds, and DAO governance functions. Currently, Mute already supports the trading and liquidity provision of more than ten assets such as ETH, USDC, MUTE, WETH, and ZKDOGE. Through the yield amplifier (Amplifier), users can also re-stake LP Tokens to obtain higher returns, and the Amplifier APY is mainly incentivized by the platform fee income, and the LP Pool is determined by the team and DAO.

Bonds are an innovative feature of Mute. Drawing on the mechanism of OlympusDAO, users can trade MUTE/ETH LP with Mute DAO to obtain MUTE Token at a discount. Through bonds, Mute DAO can increase the liquidity of the protocol and increase revenue and liquidity. However, the dMUTE obtained by users has a 7-day lock-up period, which can be exchanged for MUTE after the lock-up period. In addition, users need to lock MUTE to participate in DAO governance, and can choose a maximum lock-up period of 364 days to obtain different governance shares. Currently, Mute has more than 180,000 MUTEs locked, the platform TVL is worth more than US$270,000, and the single-day trading volume on March 25 exceeded US$7 million.

SyncSwap（https://syncswap.xyz/）

SyncSwap is one of the first DEXs on the zkSync Era. Users can trade and mine liquidity on SyncSwap. It currently supports trading of multiple assets such as ETH, USDC, WETH, and liquidity provision for 15 pairs of LPs. The current SyncSwap TVL exceeds $1.6 million, mainly concentrated in the USDC/ETH Pool, which currently offers more than 100% APR. The transaction fee of the Classic pool is 0.1%, of which liquidity providers capture 0.07% and the protocol charges 0.03% as income.

SpaceFi (https://www.spacefi.io/)

SpaceFi is a cross-chain Web3 platform that connects the Cosmos and Ethereum Layer2 ecosystems. It has released SPACE Token and currently integrates the Evmos and ZkSync networks. On zkSync Era, users can trade ETH, USDC, WETH and other assets on SpaceFi and provide liquidity. A 0.3% transaction fee is required when using SpaceSwap transactions. Officials said that users who participate in the Genesis LP pool will be incentivized. In addition to basic DEX functions, SpaceFi also includes FARM, NFT, SpaceBase, SpaceBridge, Launchpad and other unreleased functions, and said that it will be operational as early as March 27.

rhino.fi（https://rhino.fi/）

rhino.fi is a multi-chain one-stop DeFi platform that provides order book transactions, DEX, income strategies, liquidity provision, internal gas-free transfers, and cross-chain functions. Users can deposit ETH into the platform through the zkSync Era network for use, and it supports a total of 6 public chains including Arbitrum and Polygon. Currently, rhino.fi has launched DVF Token to participate in staking and governance. The governance modules cover a wide range of areas, from transaction fees, transfer fees, liquidity rewards, etc. to upgrading smart contracts, allocating funds from the treasury, and minting new DVF Tokens.

NFT Marketplace

Mint Square (https://mintsquare.io/)

Mint Square is an NFT trading market based on Ethereum L2 ZK Rollups, which has integrated StarkNet and zkSync Era networks. Users can upload, mint, buy, sell and auction NFTs in Mint Square. As of March 26, the top three NFT projects in terms of total transaction volume on Mint Square are: zkApe, Mint Square Storefront, and zkSync Name Service.

NFT

zkApe（https://zkape.io/#/）

zkApes is a metaverse project built on the zkSync Era, and its NFT has been sold recently. The total number of zkApes NFT series is 9,999, with 8,000 publicly minted at a price of 0.08 ETH (30 per wallet limit), of which Whitelist and Presale can be minted for free. As of March 26, nearly 3,400 zkApes NFTs have been minted.

zkApes has also established an Ecosystem Security Fund (ESF) of at least 100 ETH. When the floor price of zkApes NFT is lower than 0.08ETH, the repurchase mechanism will be activated. At present, the floor price of zkApes NFT on Mint Squaer is 0.078ETH, which is slightly below this level. According to official documents, zkApes NFT holders can obtain zkSync's future tokens, zkSync Name Service (ZNS) airdrops, dynamic NFT (dNFT) airdrops, DEX (ApeX) income dividends, as collateral for the zkApes DeFi system (ApesBank), zkApes arcade discounts, etc. as ecosystem builders of zkSync. However, zkApe has not yet launched the ecosystem functions described above. In addition, in addition to the DeFi module, the team will also develop multiple metaverse-related projects such as game Arena and PTE.

It is not difficult to see that zkApe is quite ambitious and intends to build a complete ecosystem on the zkSync Era. However, in terms of the current quality of NFT images, there is still a long way to go.

ZKBoredApes

(https://zkboredapes.com/)

ZKBoredApes is a community-driven ZKSync pixelated NFT project inspired by BAYC. The total number of this NFT series is 10,000, with a total of 150 properties and more than 1 million possible combinations. However, ZKBoredApes is not yet open for public minting. According to Mint Square data, there are currently 190 ZKBoredApes in circulation, with a floor price of 0.098 ETH. According to the official roadmap, ZKBoredApes will launch BORED Token and NFT staking functions in the future.

domain name

zkSync Name Service

（https://zkns.domains/）

zkSync Name Service, also known as zkSync ID, is a domain name service created by Star Protocol on the zkSync network to help users build their own on-chain DIDs on zkSync. Currently, zkSync Name Service only allows registration of domain names with a length of four digits or longer. The annual registration fee (including gas) for a four-digit domain name is approximately 0.0571 ETH (approximately $102), and the annual registration fee for a five-digit domain name is 0.0043 ETH. As of March 26, zkSync Name Service has more than 9,400 domain names registered.

At present, there are still many high-quality projects in zkSync Era waiting to be launched on the test network. It is foreseeable that in the near future, the zkSync Era chain ecosystem will flourish and will not be inferior to today's Arbitrum and Optimism.