Polygon (matic) 
Ethereum scaling solution zkSync will airdrop 3.6 billion ZK tokens to users next week, but the crypto community has raised concerns about the fairness of the distribution list.
A year after users first anticipated a governance token, the zero-knowledge (ZK) layer-2 network zkSync confirmed an airdrop for active on-chain participants. Following a snapshot in March, over 695,000 users are set to receive 17.5% of ZK’s total supply of 21 billion tokens.
The project has allocated two-thirds of its token supply to the community, designating around 33.3% of all ZK tokens to team members and investors over a four-year lock period.
Community is Everything
Two-thirds (~67%) of the ZK token supply will go to the community. Early users recognized zkSync’s potential and engaged actively. However, this trust needs to be acknowledged appropriately.
Despite the significant airdrop, users have expressed discontent with the protocol’s eligibility data. In an unusual move, the project released a CSV containing all eligible wallet addresses.
Community Decries zkSync Allocations to Sybil Wallets
Sybil accounts, defined by a single entity controlling multiple accounts, were found to have accumulated thousands of tokens. Meanwhile, some single-account users were reportedly ineligible for the airdrop, further fueling community scrutiny.
One user, self-described as “Artemis the Sybil Hunter,” claimed Sybil accounts could receive up to two million ZK tokens from the airdrop. Several of these addresses were disqualified from LayerZero’s distribution, which has launched a campaign against Sybil clusters.
Polygon Labs CISO Mudit Gupta criticized zkSync for using almost no Sybil filtering. “Anyone who knew the criteria could’ve easily farmed the sh*t out of it,” Gupta stated, as the broader DeFi community reacted to the airdrop debacle.
Data provider Nansen clarified that they did not provide “anti-Sybil” support to zkSync’s parent Matter Labs. Although the details are public, the project reserves the right to decide who could receive the airdrop, leaving room for criteria changes in the near future.
Clearing up some confusion regarding @zksync airdrop, in the spirit of transparency: We provided data on some specific wallet segments to Matter Labs – such as whales and known scammers. We did not, however, do anti-Sybil filtering, nor did we advise on the airdrop allocation itself.
This year’s airdrops have been contentious. Users who spent several months to multiple years engaging with protocols were sometimes disappointed with distribution plans and tokenomics. As crypto.news reported, Starknet marked a sharp drop in user activity after its token announcement. This pattern is not unusual during crypto airdrops, but users were particularly frustrated with the allocation.
I am once again asking crypto projects to simply run back the Arbitrum airdrop criteria. Study building a good community. Study the most loved airdrop of all time…
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