🌎 ZKsync Airdrop: Over 41% Tokens Sold on First Day

Nearly half of the top recipients of ZKsync’s airdrop liquidated the governance tokens on the first day.

Data from Nansen indicates that over 41% of 10,000 wallets sold their full allocations received from the Ethereum scaling zero-knowledge (ZK) protocol, ZKsync. According to the analytics firm, more than 4,160 addresses sold after claiming the ZK token. Approximately 30% of top recipients sold partial allocations, and less than 29% of claimants still hold their tokens after the airdrop.

The ZK token sell-offs led to a percentage drop in the coin’s price, which traded around 20 cents at the time of reporting. Nansen revealed that airdrop claimants sold almost $500 million worth of ZK in the open market, although the top recipients represent a small fraction of the total distribution plan.

ZKsync plans to distribute 3.67 billion tokens to 695,232 addresses, meaning that the top 10,000 wallets will receive only 1.44% of the allocation. As of June 17, less than half the eligible wallets had claimed under 50% of the airdrop.

ZKsync Airdrop and Selling Pressure

The significant sell-offs caused ZKsync to slump by 21% amid sustained selling pressure. One of the biggest issues associated with ZKsync’s airdrop was the lackluster Sybil filtering. Sybil airdrop farming occurs when a single user utilizes hundreds or even thousands of wallets to amass protocol activity. This practice aims to gather as many tokens as possible from the airdrop, which would otherwise go to single-user wallets, and eventually dump them after the token lists on crypto exchanges.

Crypto community members have long criticized this practice. While protocols like LayerZero have taken measures to stem Sybil participation, ZKsync adopted a different approach. Analysts noted that several Sybil addresses blacklisted for LayerZero’s airdrop received thousands of ZK tokens. However, a Nansen representative mentioned that it remained unclear if Sybil farmers were primarily behind the token dumps.

Developer’s Perspective

ZKsync developer Matter Labs appears unconcerned by the activity. The firm’s CEO, Alex Gluchowski, reportedly stated that more airdropped tokens entering open markets means more ZK coins are available to actual governance participants.