Ethereum’s Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Layer 2 scaling solution, zkSync, is facing backlash from the crypto community after its recent ZK token airdrop announcement. Community members have expressed concerns about the lack of anti-Sybil filtering and the “unfair” distribution of tokens.
ZkSync faces backlash
On Tuesday, zkSync announced its upcoming ZK token airdrop and distribution plan. According to the announcement, 17.5% of the 21 billion tokens provided by ZK will be airdropped to 695,000 eligible people. wallets on June 17.
Additionally, 33.3% of the token supply would be split between the project team and investors. The allocation was intended to reward early adopters and long-time supporters within the zkSync community.
Annoucement of the ZK token. Source: ZK Nation on X
According to the post, eligible users could receive up to 100,000 ZK tokens based on the criteria they met before the March 25 snapshot. However, the project came under fire after users started checking their allocation.
Online reports revealed that some community members were unhappy with their rewards. Despite being long-term active users, many investors claimed to have received a lower token allocation than others with less activity.
Similarly, several users have complained about not being eligible for the airdrop despite their volume and transaction history meeting the criteria. A user sharing falling in the top 0.04% of wallets and receiving only 1,023 ZK tokens, while wallets with much less activity recorded after the snapshot got the maximum allocation.
Various high-profile projects built on zkSync have expressed disappointment after not being included. zkApes NFT Project and NFT Marketplace Item sharing they had not received any airdrops despite generating $15-20 million in gas fees for the network.
Additionally, zkApes, Element NFT, and other projects formed a coalition to “keep the pressure on” the zkSync team and negotiate an allocation of tokens, which would be distributed among their communities. Critics have expressed their desire for “transparency and fairness.”
A lack of anti-Sybil filtering?
Mudit Gupta, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Polygon Labs, called the situation is “the most cultivable and cultivated airdrop ever.” Gupta highlighted the lack of anti-Sybil filtering and claimed that “anyone who knew the criteria could easily have made the most of it.”
Likewise, Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, considered the drop is not well planned from Sybil’s point of view. He stressed that the criteria were “easy to fail to meet as an actual user, and easy to meet as a farmer”.
Many users believed that the controversial criteria were not zkSync’s responsibility but that crypto analysis company Nansen was at fault. However, Nansen clarified that they were not involved in ZK’s dropping.
In a post declared that they have provided data to Matter Labs, zkSync’s development company, in the past. The information provided included data on the wallets of some known whales and scammers. Additionally, they explained that they did not do any anti-Sybiling or give advice on token allocation.
It should be noted that the project decided not to use anti-Sybil criteria for the airdrop, as this was considered an “incomplete approach.”
(…) It is tempting to eliminate robot swarms by applying strict Sybil criteria. But Sybil detection often eliminates real users with arbitrary filters. This was an incomplete approach for the ZK drop. ZK airdrop focuses on identifying real users using a human-first approach.
According to online reports, Sybil wallets are expected to receive around $135 million worth of ZK tokens from the airdrop, based on an initial list provided by LayerZero Labs. The Sybil List has since been dismissed by Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero.
ETH is trading at $3,591 in the weekly chart. Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com
