LayerZero’s native asset, ZRO, will be available for claiming at 11:00 (UTC) on June 20. Click here to see if you’re eligible!
What is LayerZero?
LayerZero is a full-chain interoperability protocol that allows censorship-resistant messaging and permissionless development. Through immutable smart contracts (Endpoints), it ensures that data packets between chains are secure and safe.
This protocol exists forever and anyone can use it. Most importantly, no one can tamper with its data packet transmission. This means that LayerZero truly realizes barrier-free data transmission between chains.
Although putting these ideals into practice is challenging, the results are clear. Since the release of V1 in 2022, LayerZero has attracted hundreds of developers to build various applications, and the number of users has surged since the launch of V2 in 2024. To date, more than 130 million messages have been sent on more than 70 blockchains, with a transaction volume of more than $50 billion.
The launch of ZRO marks a new milestone for LayerZero: it will become publicly owned, immutable infrastructure.
This article will take a deep dive into the economics, mechanics, and eligibility of ZRO tokens.
ZRO Token Economics
Supply
The total supply of ZRO is fixed at 1 billion tokens.
Allocation details:
Community Allocation: 38.3% (383,000,000 ZRO) is used to reward early users, developers, and community members.
Strategic Partners: 32.2% is allocated to strategic partners (including investors and consultants), with a 3-year unlocking period.
Core Contributors: 25.5% is allocated to core team members and also follows a 3-year unlocking period.
Token Buyback: 4.0% is committed to buyback and distributed to the community.
Community Allocation: 383,000,000 ZRO
LayerZero's success is inseparable from those who build flagship crypto applications and actively interact with users. To reward these early supporters, the distribution of community tokens is designed to incentivize the continued development of LayerZero.
The 38.3% of the community allocation (383,000,000 ZRO) is further divided into the following three categories:
Retroactive Plan: 8.5% of the ZRO supply will be available for claiming on June 20th for qualified early adopters.
Future Plans: 15.3% of the ZRO supply is reserved for future users, protocols, infrastructure builders, and community members.
Ecosystem and Growth: 14.5% of the ZRO supply will be managed by the LayerZero Foundation to promote the continued development of the ecosystem.
Strategic partners: 322,000,000 ZRO
Strategic partners are subject to a three-year lock-up period, with a full lock-up in the first year and monthly unlocking in the next two years.
Core Contributors: 255,000,000 ZRO
All current and future LayerZero team members will be subject to the same three-year lock-up period.
Buyback tokens: 40,000,000 ZRO
4.0% of the ZRO supply has been bought back and pledged to the community pool.
ZRO Token Mechanism
ZRO holders will have full control over the accumulation and distribution of protocol fees.
The fee mechanism of the LayerZero protocol will be determined by an on-chain vote every six months, and ZRO holders can vote to decide whether to enable the fee collection mechanism. If enabled, the protocol may charge a fee equal to the verification and execution cost of cross-chain messages. For example, if the transaction cost between Arbitrum and Optimism is $0.01, LayerZero may also charge a fee of $0.01.
The voting process is simple and straightforward: autonomous, on-chain, and immutable — ZRO holders can participate in a vote simply by signaling on the chain where they hold their tokens.
Eligibility Requirements
LayerZero is already one of the most widely used protocols in history, with nearly 6 million unique wallet addresses interacting with it and over 54,000 OApp contracts deployed by developers. Given this, ensuring fairness in token distribution becomes a challenge.
In order to ensure that long-term users are rewarded, we have established a series of eligibility criteria. The following are the key processes of ZRO token distribution:
Sybil filtering: In the first phase, Sybil users have 14 days to self-report and receive 15% of the expected allocation. Unreported Sybil users will be completely excluded.
Request for Proposal (RFP): 230 unique proposals were submitted for the eligible protocol RFP, and 211 were ultimately approved, allocating a total of 3% of the ZRO supply.
Criteria: Final eligibility depends on multiple factors, including user activity on the protocol, payment of fees, early participation, etc.
Inspector
The official checker is now online, come and see if your address qualifies!
