Interpreting the current situation of zkSync: A significant shrinkage in profits leads to the failure of the airdrop effect, and the official inaction causes the ecosystem to decline

Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, the news about zkSync's imminent token launch and predictions regarding airdrop rules have sparked discussions in the market. This article by PANews reviews zkSync's data from this year and finds that although zkSync's market scale still holds a leading advantage, user participation willingness is decreasing significantly, and its profit capture ability is also declining sharply. This is closely related to its years of continuous airdrop PUA, the poor quality of ecological projects, and neglect of user rights.

Few high TVL ecological projects with a single type, on-chain profits rely on Gas income but have significantly shrunk

As of now, according to L2BEAT data, as of May 6, zkSync Era's total locked value is nearly $850 million, an increase of about 44.1% since the beginning of the year, ranking eighth among L2 projects.

However, the zkSync ecological projects with high TVL are relatively few and of a single type. According to zkSync's official website, as of May 6, although its ecological projects have reached 243, covering DeFi, gaming, trading markets, NFTs, social, wallets, and DEXs, data from DeFiLlama shows that only 4 zkSync projects have a TVL exceeding $10 million, accounting for nearly 66% of the total locked value. Meanwhile, the top 10 TVL projects mainly come from DEX and lending sectors. This ecological dilemma significantly affects user participation.

From the perspective of user numbers and capital scale, zkSync Era has achieved good growth this year. Dune data shows that as of May 6, the number of zkSync Era users has approached 3.13 million, an increase of 16.3% since the beginning of the year; the total ETH bridged exceeds 3.22 million, an increase of 38.8% since the beginning of the year. However, the current average ETH bridged per user is only 1.37, with over 80% of users bridging less than 1 ETH, and only 1.3% of addresses having a balance exceeding 10 ETH. Thus, while zkSync's airdrop expectations still hold some attraction, users tend to prefer low-cost investments.

The participation of a large number of "haircut" users has also brought significant profits to zkSync Era. The latest data from Dune shows that as of May 1, after excluding the costs of publishing data to L1 and the costs of validating proofs on L1, zkSync Era has generated approximately 1,848 ETH in profits from Gas over the past four months, accounting for 10.3% of the total profits of Rollup chains. However, there is still a significant gap compared to Base, Arbitrum, and Scroll, and monthly profits have shown a significant downward trend.

On-chain profits of zkSync Era Data Source: Dune@niftytable

Since the beginning of this year, zkSync Era has collected a total of 7,678 ETH in transaction fees, accounting for nearly 17.3% of the total. Moreover, the monthly transaction fee changes show a continuous downward trend, with the fees captured in April dropping by about 88.9% compared to January; the costs required for sending to L1 have decreased by nearly 96.2%, performing better than competitors like Arbitrum, OP Mainnet, Base, Starknet, and Linea; the costs for validating proofs on L1 have reached 1,541 ETH this year, accounting for 49.7% of the total. In other words, zkSync Era's on-chain profits mainly come from Gas income, but there has been a significant shrinkage.

Monthly transaction fee changes of L2 Data Source: Dune@niftytable

Intensive Ruggings and Neglect of User Rights, Community Accuses Officials of Inaction

The inability to guarantee user rights and the inaction of officials are causing zkSync to lose community trust.

Despite the numerous on-chain incidents and rug pulls in the dark forest of crypto, the indifference of zkSync ecological projects and officials towards user rights is becoming one of the important reasons for its market scale's difficulty in expanding.

For example, the zkSync lending protocol Eralend suffered a total loss of about $3.4 million due to a flash loan attack, but not only did it fail to recover the stolen funds, but it also did not provide any compensation to users; after the zkSync ecological lending platform xBank Finance suffered a loss of $550,000 due to a hacker attack and its liquidity nearly reached zero, it stated that it was contacting the attacker to recover user funds through a white hat bounty, yet it similarly did not mention any compensation for users; the decentralized entertainment platform ZKasino was accused of a soft rug after forcibly converting over 10,000 ETH of user deposits into platform tokens, and the officials did not respond to the private modification of rules or the whereabouts of the funds, instead transferring the funds in batches. Currently, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service has arrested suspects in the ZKasino fraud case and seized €11 million in assets.

In the face of significant harm to user interests, zkSync officials have never made any relevant responses or improvement measures, reflecting their poor management of the ecosystem and the low cost of wrongdoing, which has become one of the important reasons for the chaos.

In response, many community members have expressed dissatisfaction, stating that the zkSync team has not taken on the responsibility of ecological construction, including supporting some quality projects, but instead has allowed various rug projects to run rampant. Although the officials repeatedly emphasize the importance of the community, they turn a blind eye to project wrongdoing and user rights, showing that zkSync is more concerned about Gas income than the community.

Thus, in the current market where L2 projects are intensively launched, as the airdrop effect gradually fades, zkSync will face greater challenges if it does not pay attention to ecological construction and user interests.