ZkSync Airdrop Could Be Valued Higher Than the Entire Network’s TVL

The upcoming airdrop of the ZK token from Ethereum zk-rollup scaling solution zkSync could be valued significantly higher than the project’s entire total value locked (TVL).

zkSync, which currently boasts a TVL of $852 million or 226,000 ETH (down from its peak of 381,000 ETH in July 2023), is expected to airdrop a portion of its 21 billion token supply this month.

Learn more: What Are Zero-Knowledge Proofs?

Industry standards suggest a 10% airdrop, which at current pre-launch market prices of $0.63 per token on perpetuals platform Aevo, would translate to a staggering $1.32 billion market capitalization, which is almost double zkSync’s current TVL.

Leading layer 2 ecosystem Arbitrum has $18.9 billion in TVL, according to data from L2Beat, of which only 16% is ARB with a market cap of $3.2 billion. Mode, another recently launched Ethereum L2 solution, has a TVL of $706 million. The MODE token itself has a market cap of only $47 million, less than 10% of the network’s TVL.

This stark contrast highlights the potential disconnect between airdrop size and network value in zkSync’s case, considering it would give ZK 60% of the blockchain’s TVL as the airdrop would bring the networks’ total TVL to $2.2 billion.

Moreover, the token ZK’s fully diluted valuation (FDV) would be around $13 billion, similar to the recently launched Starknet’s STRK, and more than Arbitrum’s $11 billion FDV. According to Token Terminal, Arbitrum has 8.7 million monthly active users, four times more than zkSync, and 24 times more than Starknet.

Last week, zkSync got into hot water after attempting to trademark the term “ZK.” After a lot of backlash from the community, Matter Labs, the entity behind the development of zkSync, decided to drop the application.