ZKsync explained the controversial aspects of the airdrop

The ZKsync project team published a FAQ in which it collected answers to some community questions regarding the airdrop of ZK tokens. In particular, the developers explained why addresses with zero transaction history are eligible for a drop.

Thank you for all the feedback and discussions over the past few days.

In 2024, airdrops are extremely challenging. Sophisticated industrial farms operate millions of bots indistinguishable from real people in behavioral patterns. This renders traditional activity-based airdrops…

— ZK Nation (@TheZKNation) June 13, 2024

ZKsync announced an airdrop on June 11, 2024. The token hallmark will be opened on June 17th. However, after the developers added the ability to check whether distribution criteria are met, outrage broke out in the community.

One of the reasons for this was the fact that some addresses that were supposedly eligible for the drop turned out to have zero transaction history. That is, they did not interact in any way with the ZKsync project.

In addition, the community expressed dissatisfaction with the wide variation in rewards, lack of transparency and ineffective measures to combat sybils.

At the same time, ZK Nation, the ZKsync community, said that a wave of misinformation had been raised against the project.

On June 14, the organization published an FAQ in which they commented on the community’s criticism and also provided answers to some of the questions raised here.

They can be grouped according to the following theses:

• 17.5% of the entire ZK supply was allocated for distribution. 89% will be received by users, 11% by participants, these are individual contractors and developers who contributed to the development of the project;
• for the second category (participants), activity in ZKsync networks was an optional condition for receiving a drop. This is how the organization explained why addresses with zero transaction history fit the distribution criteria;
• the eligibility of a particular participant was determined by the sum of the variables. These are the number of criteria it meets, the amount of capital deposited (TWAB for 12 months) and the multiplier. At the same time, as the team noted, the volume of transactions itself did not affect the size of the potential drop for a specific address;
• some users received less than others due to cost scaling. This indicator directly depends on how much assets were sent to the ZKsync Era network and how long they were held;
• 2.8% of the distribution was reserved for the Degen and Bonsai, Crypto The Game, Pudgy and Milady communities;
• addresses with more than 100,000 ZK are members who have received rewards both as users and as participants;
• the developers “identified no major issues,” which may indicate there are no plans to recalculate the rewards.

The team also stated that they are preparing a more comprehensive material to answer all community questions with maximum transparency.