Author:Haotian
Everyone is looking forward to @Starknet's airdrop to inject a shot of adrenaline into the Layer2 industry. How much will be issued and how will it be issued? It is still unclear, but one thing is certain, the ZK-Rollup team has reached the point where they have to issue an airdrop to "save the market."
In my opinion, this wave of airdrop catalyst will be a self-redemption action for ZK-Rollup. Why?
1) It is said that ZK-Rollup is the final solution of layer2 Rollup. In front of ZK-Rollup, OP-Rollup is just a transitional solution and will be eliminated sooner or later.
In terms of absolute technology, the debate over the merits of OP-Rollup and ZK-Rollup has been going on for too long.
FinalityProof gives a certain status to each transaction compared to the 7-day optimistic challenge period of Fraud Proof. From the perspective of personal sovereignty, there is no doubt that the future of Rollup must be ZK-Rollup.
According to L2Beat data, there are 26 ZK-Rollup solutions among 65 Rollup projects, while there are only 21 OP-Rollups.
Among these ZK-Rollup solutions, Scroll, Taiko, etc. pursue the ultimate EVM equivalence, aiming to improve compatibility with the Ethereum mainnet; zkSync and Starknet pursue the comprehensive scalability of the chain, trying to increase incremental users for the mainnet by improving transaction processing speed and throughput; Aztec focuses on solving transaction privacy issues through ZK; others like dYdX and zkSYnc Lite explore the potential of ZK technology in the direction of transactions and Payment.
Overall, ZK-Rollup technology is becoming more and more segmented, and it is beginning to over-pursue details to achieve a more extreme technical narrative: such as strict circuit efficiency and complete EVM equivalence. There is nothing wrong with pursuing extreme technology, but don’t forget that ZK itself has a high technical threshold. Excessive pursuit of technology will make the team ignore user experience and ignore the original intention of ZK to solve practical problems.
This is not just my observation, but also the real voice from the market. For the ZK-Rollup project, they should balance the pursuit of technology and actual market demand, aiming to improve the feasibility and high user experience of ZK technology, and not be self-satisfied in the technical narrative of to VC (without naming names).
2) Although Starknet's airdrop distribution standards are still unclear, its value orientation and purpose are well known. For example, STRK will be distributed to DApp developers to encourage them to build projects; STRK will be distributed to early ECMP community contributors (contents, meetups, workshops, etc.); 900 million STRK will be distributed for future user rebates, etc.
It is not difficult to see that Starknet's airdrop distribution will care about individual contributions and value, and also pay more attention to the long-term ecological incentive effect of airdrops. Therefore, I judge that the scale of STRK airdrops will definitely reach the "satisfaction point" of most people, which is the switch to stimulate everyone's enthusiasm to continue to contribute to ZK-Rollup. In addition, most tokens will be bound through Paymaster and Transaction, and will be released linearly as GAS fee subsidies in future ecological contributions.
Looking at Starknet’s disastrous TVL data and the poor user trading experience, you will understand why trading rebates are needed. Although the staking party has contributed a lot of TXS in the early stage, it is not enough. So we simply openly offer rebates. You can continue to slash, and it is better to be aggressive.
After all, the contribution of the Mao Mao Party is also real. This seems to mean that retroactive airdrops may be weaker than potential airdrops in the future. Starknet's airdrop incentive game has just begun. It is impossible for you to share the cake and then disperse.
Tokenomics is a double-edged sword. Project owners like Starknet, which have a solid team, capital, and technology, will not easily use Tokenomics. There are precedents in history where the ecosystem becomes deserted after an airdrop. This is even more challenging for an ecosystem like ZK that has a high technical threshold and poor user experience.
But facing the current bleak ecological situation, apart from Tokenomics as the last trump card, how else can the story of ZK-Rollup be continued?
