LD Capital: Zksync Mainnet Launches Two Months, Ecosystem Development Report

Author: LD Capital

zkSync is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution based on the ZK Rollups architecture, which launched its mainnet Fair Onboarding Alpha on February 16, 2023. During this phase, only registered projects were allowed to test, and it was not open to end users. On March 24, 2023, the zkSync Era mainnet was opened to everyone, and zkSync 2.0 was renamed to zkSync Era, while zkSync 1.0 was renamed to zkSync Lite.

Now, two months after its launch, how is the development of the zkSync ecosystem? Let's take a closer look.

1. TVL

The TVL of zkSync Era maintained steady growth in the first three weeks after launch, stagnated after mid-April, and has seen some recovery since mid-May. Currently, the TVL is $283 M, with a 9.5% increase in the past week, accounting for 3.29% of the overall Layer 2 TVL, ranking fourth.

2. On-chain Activity

According to browser data, zkSync Era has processed approximately 21 million on-chain transactions since its launch, with 1.7 million unique addresses. Influenced by the Arbitrum airdrop, zkSync saw high on-chain activity right from the start, with daily active addresses fluctuating between 60k and 80k in the early days, dropping to about 30k in early May, and then significantly increasing due to activities and airdrops.

On May 11, OKX Wallet launched a one-stop DApp exploration and airdrop interaction platform called Cryptopedia, featuring zkSync Era as the theme for its first phase, setting up an interaction area for zkSync Era. Users who completed interaction tasks could not only receive potential airdrop rewards but also draw from five different rarity NFTs designed jointly by OKX Wallet and zkSync. As a result of this event, zkSync Era's on-chain activity significantly increased. Additionally, OKX opened deposits and withdrawals for zkSync Era mainnet assets on May 20.

The metaverse project of zkSync Era, zkApes, launched the $ZAT airdrop on May 10, and subsequently shortened the airdrop claim period to one week. Before the airdrop claim deadline on May 17, zkSync Era's on-chain activity reached a new high. On the day the airdrop ended, the number of $ZAT holding addresses was 655,000, surpassing USDC to become the second token by holding addresses on zkSync Era, following ETH.

On May 21, the zkSync Era domain platform ERA Name Service also conducted an $ERA token airdrop, with 43,500 addresses participating.

3. Cross-chain Fund Situation

Data from the official bridge also shows similar activity levels. Stimulated by the Arbitrum airdrop, there was significant growth in active addresses in the first three weeks after the mainnet launch, followed by a decrease from late April to early May. After mid-May, the data resumed growth, with an increase in activity.

4. Ecosystem Projects

According to Defillama statistics, the top five projects by TVL in the zkSync Era ecosystem are all decentralized exchanges.

SyncSwap offers trading, liquidity mining, and launchpad (not yet started) features, with 85% of the TVL concentrated in the USDC/ETH Pool, and an APR of 25%.

SyncSwap plans to issue 100 million platform tokens (not yet launched) and launched a trading mining event called "SyncSwap Loyalty Program" on April 10, allocating a total of 900,000 SYNC tokens for the genesis epoch, which lasts for 30 days and ended on May 10.

Users can earn 1 ySYNC for every $1 in transaction fees generated. During the genesis epoch, users minted a total of 1.18M ySYNC (which corresponds to a total of $1.18 million in transaction fees), and 900,000 SYNC tokens were distributed based on the average ySYNC holdings, resulting in approximately 0.76 SYNC tokens for each ySYNC. Currently, this activity is paused after the genesis epoch.

iZUMi Finance is a multi-chain one-stop Liquidity as a Service (LaaS) protocol, currently supporting four chains: ETH, Arbitrum, Polygon, and zkSync Era.

The innovative discrete liquidity DL-AMM (Discretized Liquidity AMM) mechanism used by iZiswap is similar to the liquidity book mechanism of Trader Joe, which was released earlier but did not attract widespread discussion like the liquidity book at that time. DL-AMM allocates liquidity at certain fixed prices to further enhance capital efficiency. Additionally, iZiswap Pro also offers order book trading.

LiquidBox is iZUMi's liquidity mining solution based on Uniswap V3 LP, allowing project parties to set incentives for LPs within specific value ranges. Users can receive corresponding incentives by staking V3 LP tokens into the iZUMi protocol.

The relevant data from Defillama and its official website show significant discrepancies; the following chart displays the TVL and trading volume as shown on the official website.

The platform token IZI was launched in December 2021 and has been listed on exchanges such as Bybit, Kucoin, and Gate. After a prolonged decline, it saw a noticeable rebound after launching on zkSync in April this year.

Mute is one of the first DEXs on zkSync Era. In addition to trading and providing liquidity, Mute has also launched yield amplifiers, bonds, and DAO governance features. Users can purchase MUTE tokens at a discount using MUTE/ETH LP with a 7-day lock-up period. MUTE tokens have been listed on Bitget, and the token price surged when the zkSync Era mainnet launched, but has since followed a trend of oscillating downward. Currently, the main TVL is concentrated in the USDC/ETH Pool, with an APR of 28%.

Velocore is the first ve(3,3) DEX built on zkSync Era based on Solidly and Velodrome. It conducted private and public sales on its launchpad platform on April 3 and 4, with a hard cap of 90 ETH for the private sale and 450 ETH for the public sale, achieving over 500% and 1814% oversubscription, respectively, with fundraising prices of 0.0000207 ETH and 0.0000229 ETH, equivalent to about $0.037/$0.041, peaking at about 6 times the price, currently maintaining around 2 times the return.

SpaceFi is a cross-chain platform connecting the Cosmos and Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystems, currently integrating Evmos and zkSync, with products including DEX + NFT + Launchpad + Spacebase. Spacebase is an on-chain community, and creating or joining a Spacebase can increase mining rewards. Currently, 18 Spacebases have been created, with approximately 30,000 members joining the space. On May 6, SpaceFi adjusted the economic model of its platform token SPACE, reducing the maximum supply from 600 million to 100 million, while burning 40 million of the initial supply. Currently, the circulating market cap of SPACE is only $780,000, and trading volume is also low.

Zigzag is a decentralized order book exchange and the first DEX on zkSync 1.0, currently supporting zkSync Lite and Arbitrum. On March 3, 2023, over 100,000 users received a $zz token airdrop, accounting for 34% of the total token supply. The Zigzag team also developed a decentralized betting platform called zkasico, where the platform bet tokens include USDC, USDT, ZZ, and ETH.

Nexon is one of the first lending protocols launched on zkSync Era, now renamed Eralend. According to the disclosed token model, 61% will be used for community incentives, 10% for IDO, 15% allocated to DAO, 12% to the team, and 2% to advisors, with a 6-month lock-up period for the portions allocated to the team and advisors. Due to the delay in token launch and the diversion of activity heat from other protocols, Eralend's current TVL growth is slow, only around $2.5 million.

Reactor Fusion is currently the largest lending protocol by TVL on zkSync Era and is one of the few projects on zkSync that has issued tokens. The TVL is around $3.43 million, currently only supporting ETH and USDC assets.

UniDex is a derivatives DEX protocol founded in April 2022, initially on the Fantom chain, and has since expanded to other public chains and Layer 2s such as Optimism and zkSync Era. Currently, the TVL is $3.87 million, with approximately $1.6 million on zkSync Era.

Onchain Trade is a spot and derivatives DEX protocol built on zkSync Era, with a current TVL of $670,000, which is relatively small. Its token is OT, which conducted an IFO in March 2023, with a public offering price of $0.15. After launching, it briefly surged to around $1, then dropped, currently around $0.18.

Cheems is a meme project on zkSync Era. From May 4 to 6, holders of wallets with a balance greater than 0.01 ETH or $PEPE or $AIDOGE could claim $Cheems tokens, with a total of 65,000 addresses participating in the claim. The current number of holding addresses is 51,000, with a circulating market cap of $27 million, and the current price still shows a high return compared to the opening price.