ZKsync Airdrop Controversy: Unconventional Rules Raise Questions, Mouse Warehouse Disputes Erupt

Author: Nan Zhi, Odaily Planet Daily

Yesterday, ZKsync announced that it will conduct an airdrop next week and open airdrop queries, marking the end of a 4-year interactive journey. However, compared to previous Layer 2 solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum, the proportion of eligible addresses for the ZKsync airdrop is significantly lower. There are a total of 6,826,968 addresses on the ZKsync chain, while the number of qualified addresses is 695,232, accounting for about 10%. According to community statistics, 9,203 addresses received 23.9% of the total airdrop amount.

Subsequently, ZKsync officially released the airdrop details. From the details, it can be seen that although the airdrop rules are not considered "harsh," they appear "unconventional" compared to regular standards, leading to rising community skepticism regarding ZKsync's insider trading.

Why are there so few qualified addresses?

Before ZKsync officially announced the airdrop rules, entities like Nansen, TrustGo, and some crypto KOLs had made predictions about the number of airdrop participants. In TrustGo's report, 2.9 million addresses reached the qualifying score, and even under strict standards, 2.05 million addresses met the requirements. For instance, crypto KOL @DefiWimar concluded through analyzing the code of the ZK Nation website that the number of addresses eligible for the ZKsync airdrop would reach 1,650,351.

But why is the final number of qualified addresses far lower than the predicted value? A major reason is that ZKsync set relatively unconventional conditions compared to previous airdrops. Let's first look at a benchmark address provided in TrustGo's earlier report, which ranked 500,000th in their model:

• Interaction amount: $29,700;
• Cross-chain amount: $3,356;
• Active months: 11 months;
• Number of transactions: 182;
• Number of unique contract interactions: 27;
• Creation duration: 312 days;

However, this benchmark address only triggered one of the seven essential conditions set by ZKsync. Generally, the core standards for airdrops are the activity level, duration, and amount of funds, but ZKsync established seven thresholds, including conditions for the Era mainnet such as interacting with 10 contracts, providing liquidity, using Paymaster, trading 10 ERC-20 tokens, and holding a Lamp NFT, which excluded most "lottery numbers."

Although Odaily pointed out in an April report that "Paymaster and LIBERTAS OMNIBUS COLLECTION have become important differentiating standards," the publication date was after the snapshot time.

After passing the first threshold, ZKsync also set innovative fund retention conditions as a core calculation parameter for airdrop distribution.

Caught in insider trading controversy

If it were just strict rules or somewhat unconventional conditions, it might still be within the community's acceptable range. However, ZKsync's series of mysterious operations has led to increasing skepticism.

Lack of transparency in decision-making

First, ZKsync set seven essential conditions, and at least one must be met to enter subsequent calculations. However, ZKsync emphasized in the detailed document:

Meeting one or more of the above airdrop criteria does not imply a legal right or claim to receive an airdrop; all decisions related to airdrop distribution are solely at the discretion of the ZKSync Association.

This wording greatly fueled community dissatisfaction, with many users questioning whether ZKsync's actions were essentially aimed at arranging insider trading to seize the tokens that users rightfully deserve.

Additionally, ZKsync stated at the end of the document that addresses meeting the airdrop conditions but holding fewer than 450 tokens would have their allocated tokens reclaimed, further exacerbating community tensions.

Nansen distances itself

After a large number of addresses were filtered out of the airdrop range, some users accused Nansen of conducting anti-witch measures and address filtering for ZKsync, causing them to lose airdrop eligibility.

In response to this rumor, Nansen quickly issued a statement to clarify: "We provided some specific wallet data to Matter Labs, such as whale users and known scammers. However, we did not conduct anti-witch measures, nor did we make any suggestions regarding the airdrop distribution itself."

Suspicious addresses frequently appear, but the official response is lacking

After the airdrop link was made public, various screenshots flaunting wealth began circulating in the community. However, a mysterious address 0xF1802d9a70Bdc6F6EffD65d44b33226eE0E6A sparked direct community questioning. In ZKsync's ordinary user airdrop, the airdrop cap is set at 100,000 tokens, while this address received 5.64 million tokens. Besides this address, many low-activity addresses that received extremely high token allocations have been circulating in the community.

In response, neither the official ZKsync account nor the ZKNation account provided any comments. After 80 minutes, the ZKsync ecosystem DEX zkSwap Finance stepped in to clarify the facts, stating that this address belongs to zkSwap and is allocated project development tokens by ZKsync. zkSwap emphasized that these tokens would be used for protocol and community development, which somewhat quelled the skepticism.

However, not all questions have been answered. Many known scam addresses that had already been flagged still received ZKsync airdrops, including a scam address from over a year ago associated with Arbitrum and a recent LayerZero scam address.

According to witch-hunter Artemis's post on X platform, a user who participated in the Arbitrum airdrop and profited $4.2 million is still eligible to receive nearly 1,000,000 ZK tokens through their 3,000+ wallet addresses.

Subsequently, based on Artemis's further investigations, some insider trading operations obtained over 2 million ZK tokens by depositing the same Ethereum funds on the same day, with each wallet averaging 15,000 ZK tokens. More importantly, almost all accounts are marked on the witch list of @LayerZero_Labs.

However, similar to the situation with zkSwap, the official account did not respond to the doubts, and only ZKsync's CEO Alex continued to retweet positive comments about the airdrop.

Resistance voices persist

ZKsync's silence has continued to fuel community resistance. Today, calls for major exchanges not to list ZK (ZKsync) tokens and to return the ZK name to Polyhedra are gradually spreading, but the likelihood of ZKsync listening to community voices and revising the airdrop rules and scope is nearly zero.

Looking back at the final results of the "haircut" interaction process, the 0.005 ETH threshold of Starknet and ZKsync's fund retention calculation rules make it increasingly unlikely to obtain a large airdrop simply through interaction frequency and duration. The funding threshold requirements are becoming higher and higher, essentially leading to a similar outcome as a funding points system, and the golden age of interactions may come to an end with ZKsync.