Is the Starknet airdrop a self-salvation for ZK Rollup?
Original author: Haotian (X: @tmel0211)
Editors note: On December 8, the Starknet Foundation plans to distribute 1.8 billion tokens as user rewards and transaction incentives. It will first allocate 50 million tokens to encourage DeFi protocol activities within the network, aiming to increase liquidity. sex. Can Starknet give the Layer 2 industry a shot in the arm? Is it time for the ZK-Rollup echelon to issue airdrops to rescue the market? Crypto analyst Haotian (X: @tme l0 211) posted an article expressing his views on this matter. Odaily summarized it as follows:
Everyone is hoping that @Starknet’s airdrop will inject a shot in the arm into the Layer 2 industry. How much and how will it be distributed? It’s not clear yet, but one thing is certain, it’s time for the ZK-Rollup echelon to have to issue airdrops to “rescue” the market.
In my opinion, this wave of catalyst airdrops will be a self-salvation action for ZK-Rollup. Why?
1) It is said that ZK-Rollup is the end of the layer 2 Rollup solution. In the face of ZK-Rollup, OP-Rollup is a transitional solution and will be eliminated sooner or later.
In terms of absolute technology, the debate surrounding the advantages and disadvantages of OP-Rollup and ZK-Rollup has been going on for too long.
Finality Proof gives a certain status to each transaction. Compared with the 7-day optimistic challenge period of Fraud Proof, from the perspective of personal Sovereignism, the future of Rollup must be ZK-Rollup, there is no doubt.
According to L2B eat data, there are 26 ZK-Rollup solutions among 65 Rollup projects, while year-on-year, there are only 21 OP-Rollup.
Among these ZK-Rollup solutions, Scroll, Taiko, etc. pursue the ultimate EVM equivalence and aim to improve compatibility with the Ethereum main network; zkSync and Starknet pursue the comprehensive expansion capabilities of the chain and try to improve transaction processing speed and throughput. The main network increases incremental users; Aztec focuses on solving transaction privacy issues through ZK; others like dYdX and zkSYnc Lite tap the potential of ZK technology in the direction of transactions and payments.
Overall, ZK-Rollup technology is becoming more and more subdivided and begins to excessively pursue details to achieve a more extreme technical narrative: such as stringent circuit efficiency and complete EVM equivalence. There is nothing wrong with pursuing the ultimate technology, but don’t forget that ZK itself has a high technical threshold. Excessive pursuit of technology will make the team ignore the user experience and ignore the original intention of ZK to solve practical problems.
This is not just my observation, but also a real voice from the market. For the ZK-Rollup project team, they should balance the technical pursuit and actual market demand, with the goal of improving the implementability and high user experience of ZK technology. , don’t be immersed in the technical narrative of to VC and be moved (not naming names).
2) Although Starknet’s airdrop issuance standards are not yet clear, the value orientation and purpose of its airdrops are well known. For example, distributing STRK to DApp developers to encourage them to build projects; distributing STRK to early ECMP community contributors (contents, meetups , workshops, etc.), distribute 900 million STRK for future user rebates, etc.
It is not difficult to see that Starknet’s airdrop distribution will care about the individual’s contribution and value. In addition, it will pay more attention to the long-term ecological incentive effect of the airdrop. Therefore, I judge that the scale of the STRK airdrop will definitely reach the pleasure point of most people. This is the switch that stimulates everyones enthusiasm to continue to contribute to ZK-Rollup. In addition, most of the tokens will be bound through Paymaster and Transaction. In the future, The ecological contribution as a GAS fee subsidy will be released linearly at the same time.
If you look at Starknet’s disastrous TVL data and the poor user transaction experience, you will understand why it is necessary to provide transaction rebates? Although the hair-raising party members have already contributed a large amount of TXS in the early stage, it is not enough. They simply use it as a rebate. You can continue to use it, preferably more vigorously.
After all, the Mao Mao Party’s contribution is real. This seems to mean that retroactive airdrops may be weaker than potential future airdrops. Starknet’s airdrop incentive game has just begun. It is impossible for everyone to share the cake and then disperse.
Tokenomics is a double-edged sword. Project parties like Starknet, which are well-established in terms of team, capital, and technology, will not easily use Tokenomics. In history, there are many cases where the ecology has changed after the airdrop was launched and the atmosphere was lively. The unprecedented precedent is even more challenging for an ecosystem like ZK with high technical threshold and poor user experience.
But in the face of the current bleak ecological status quo, apart from Tokenomics, the last trump card, how can the story of ZK-Rollup be continued?
