DeFi
Binance attempts to appease ZKsync users excluded from airdrop with $2.4 million distribution
- ZKsync’s ZK token airdrop began on Monday.
- The company behind ZKsync has accused bots of orchestrating a campaign to dry up the airdrop design.
- Binance said it would intervene to placate angry users.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, will distribute crypto worth $2 million to 52,500 people to appease users frustrated with the launch of a new token, ZK from ZKsync Era.
On social media, accounts allegedly belonging to longtime ZKsync Era users criticized the blockchain’s parent company, Matter Labs, for excluding them from a list of users who could claim some of the newly issued tokens.
The company insisted that the ZK airdrop was “unconventional” but that it prioritized real users.
“There is massive and coordinated action Sybil disinformation campaign against ZKsync on said Wednesday via an affiliated social media account. “Managed by thousands of robots.”
However, Binance said On Sunday, it would give some users excluded from the ZK airdrop a total of 10.5 million ZK tokens starting June 25. ZK was trading at $0.23 almost 12 hours after its launch on Monday morning.
These users had to meet certain criteria, including initiating 50 or more transactions on ZKsync Era and between February 2023 and March 2024.
Binance said it would distribute the tokens “in light of ongoing community concerns regarding the distribution of ZK tokens.”
ZKsync Era is one of the largest blockchains based on Ethereum, known as “layer 2”. Users have transferred more than $770 million in crypto to the blockchain, according to L2BEAT, and deposited around $128 million into its DeFi ecosystem, according to data from DefiLlama.
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ZKsync is not the first project to be burned by an airdrop.
ZkSync Era is one of the largest layer 2 blockchains.
From the outset, many crypto-based companies promise to eventually cede control of their products to their users. Tokens like ZK grant membership and voting rights to these digital cooperatives.
But distributing these tokens can be difficult. The companies have been criticized for giving their employees and investors an outsized slice of tokens, leaving little room for longtime users who expect a reward for taking the gamble by putting their crypto into untested applications .
Additionally, companies may unintentionally exclude real users in their attempt to filter out “bots” that mimic user behavior in order to grab a slice of newly issued tokens.
When Matter Labs detailed the airdrop, the company boasted it had reserved 17.5% of ZK tokens for approximately 695,000 long-time users, “the largest distribution of tokens to users among top users.” accumulations.”
Airdrop complaints
But it was quickly forced to defend itself after a wave of complaints from users allegedly furious at having were not eligible for the drop or that they received a paltry number of ZK tokens while other users, apparently less engaged, obtained more.
While grateful Regarding the “unconventional” design of its airdrop, Matter Labs said it was “proud” of the “reasonable compromises” it had made to ensure the tokens went to real users.
“In 2024, airdrops will be extremely difficult,” the company wrote on X. “Sophisticated factory farms operate millions of robots indistinguishable from real people in their behavior patterns. This makes traditional activity-based airdrops completely useless for building resilient and sustainable communities.
There are 21 billion ZK tokens, a third of which are reserved for investors and employees of Matter Labs and the ZKsync Foundation.
Meanwhile, 19.9% of the tokens will go to the ZKsync Foundation and 29.3% have been reserved for the treasury of the ZKsync Token Assembly, the digital cooperative that will control ZKsync Era. The remaining 17.5% had been reserved for Monday’s drop.
As of Monday afternoon, nearly three-quarters of the airdrop tokens had been claimed.
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent at DL News. Do you have any advice? Send him an email to aleks@dlnews.com.