Anh Nguyen | Unsplash
Probably zkSync is one of the ecosystems that has generated the most controversy over time. A large number of people have participated for a long time with the clear intention of being eligible in an airdrop where the rules were not entirely clear.
Eligibility criteria can be a double-edged sword, as they are not explicit, one will have to strive to cover all possibilities from the outset trying to reflect as much activity as possible on the network. And speaking of network, zkSync is a Layer 2 scalability solution for Ethereum that provides great flexibility in the ecosystem.
ZKSync official site
At the moment the "farming" activity started in zkSync, it was clear that the cost of actively participating would be very high. We're talking about spending money on network fees, which, although relatively low, would accumulate in a noticeable way. You would climb the rankings by participating in the bridges, exchanging tokens, making swaps, but above all, by making strong moves to increase the transaction volume, for which you would need a good amount of money flowing.
Starting such a complex journey is not simple at all. You must start in a timely manner, as it is one of the criteria to qualify. Moreover, often the criteria are not explicit, and you must focus on leading a leaderboard or maybe a ranking to see if you make it to the top 10%, so to speak. Let's keep in mind that there could be millions of accounts participating, likely with higher incomes.
However, there was a previous opportunity in another ecosystem where users were well rewarded, giving hope that this could be another opportunity of that caliber. Clearly, it did not turn out that way, and now many people are expressing their frustration.
It was established to distribute 17.5% of the token supply for the airdrop for participating in the network. However, when they released the eligibility checker, many users found that they were not eligible, even those who had significant results after participating exhaustively and expensively. It is said that 90% of wallets were excluded and did not meet the eligibility criteria, though it could also be due to being considered Sybil users.
There were cases where accounts with low participation received a very generous airdrop, while others who had achieved a high score received little or were not eligible at all. The criteria that were later known included interacting with smart contracts, depositing liquidity in DeFi protocols, trading ERC-20 tokens, owning certain NFTs, donating to Gitcoin, and some other activities split between the Era and Lite chains.
A tragic and unfortunate case was that of a man who took out a loan to participate in this event and, after not being eligible, decided to end his life upon realizing he couldn't repay what he had borrowed with the hope of making a good financial decision to change his life. I suppose these types of news stories tend to repeat themselves over and over.
Obtained from CoinTelegraph
For those who have been eligible, it does not mean that they have lifted a weight off their shoulders, as there is still the issue of the claim. It turns out that the RPC nodes are experiencing a high degree of overload, or at least a high load, which causes the system to collapse affecting performance. The team behind the project says they are working on increasing the capacities of the RPC, however, it has not yet been resolved.
The ZK Nation team was addressing user concerns and updating the FAQ documentation on how eligibility criteria have been and their relationship with Sybil detection. In my opinion, this doesn't make sense to do now, as it should have existed from the beginning and there would be less discontented people or at least not disillusioned.
Sybil is a term that describes a user who manages to control a large number of accounts to receive multiple airdrops. The team behind ZK mentioned that the idea of being able to implement a Sybil detection system should not be so strict as to exclude real users.
Distribution is expected to continue until January 2025, and the distribution will focus on ZkSync Era users, ZK Quest participants, security researchers, moderators, GitHub developers, and participants and holders of certain NFTs. It is also announced that there will be a second wave starting next week.
ZKSync Price (ZK) | CoinGecko
The current price of ZK is $0.24 with a decrease of 20.8%. Binance already has it listed in the pairs ZK/USDT, ZK/FDUSD, and ZK/BTC. However, depositing right now could be a problem as the zkSync Era network appears to be overloaded.
- Main image edited in Canva.
- I have consulted information in decrypt.co.
- I have used Hive Translator to translate from Spanish to English.