Source: Centralresearch

Project introduction

ZKSYNC Era is a Layer 2 expansion solution based on Ethereum. It uses zero -knowledge proof and ROLLUP architecture to provide a faster and more economical trading experience.By moving most activities to the Layer 2 network, while maintaining the security and endability of the Ethereum main network, ZKSYNC Era effectively reduces network congestion and reduces transfer costs.As a version 2.0 of ZKSYNC, ZKSYNC Era has significantly improved performance and functions compared to version 1.0 (that is, ZKSYNC Lite).

The highlights of ZKSYNC Era include the security of the main network level, and no need to rely on third parties to ensure the reliability of transactions.It supports the transfer of ETH and ERC20 tokens, which is confirmed immediately on Layer 1 and can be completed within ten minutes.The transaction cost is extremely low, and the cost of ERC20 token is about one percent of the main network, and the transfer cost of ETH is about one -thirty of the main network.You can receive funds without registering, and you can pay to the existing Ethereum address (including smart contracts).In addition, ZKSYNC Era also supports multiple signatures and smart contracts without permission, and can bring the funds back to the main network in about ten minutes, achieving a highly efficient and flexible user experience.

Core component

zkevm

ZKEVM is the technology that runs the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) as a smart contract engine on ZK Rollup.Its main goal is to retain the Rollup performance advantage, and completely copy the experience of Ethereum on Layer 2 to provide users with familiar development environments and operating models.

Account abstraction

Account abstract introduces a new type of account, which is separated from transaction verification and transaction execution by regarding accounts as smart contracts.This enables each account to have its own logic, achieve seamless compatibility, not only protects the autonomy of users, but also provides a safer and smoother user experience.

zkporter

ZKPORTER solves the problem of zkrollup expansion by the availability of the data under the chain.It does not rely on the release of data at the basic layer of Ethereum, which breaks through the scalability bottleneck and achieves more efficient data processing and larger expansion space.

Team and financing

team

Matter Labs is a German company behind ZKSYNC. It was established in 2018. It currently has more than 50 employees and is committed to developing efficient, low -cost and safe Ethereum transaction solutions.The company is led by CEO Alex Gluchowski. He has more than 15 years of development experience and is keen on personal freedom and decentralized technology.The team’s CTO also has rich technical background and development experience, and jointly promotes ZKSync’s innovation and development with other core members.

Financing

Since 2018, ZKSYNC has completed 5 rounds of financing and raised a total of 458 million US dollars, which is the most financing project in the Layer 2 expansion plan.The most recent round C financing made its valuation of $ 2 billion.These funds come from top investors and risk capital companies, including Binance, AAVE, CURVE, Coinbase Ventures, A16Z Crypto, Dragonfly, and BlockChain Capital.In 2022, ZKSYNC received a $ 200 million fund promised by BitDao, further ensuring that the project development and infrastructure construction was sufficient.

Token economics

ZKSYNC native currency is $ ZK, with a total supply of 21 billion pieces.

Distribution: 29.3%token assembly, 19.9%ecosystem initiative, 17.5%of airdrops, 16.1%in the team, and 17.2%of investors.

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Secondary market performance

The current price of $ ZK tokens is about $ 0.25, which is open on June 11, and has been launched on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges including Binance.On June 17, the market value of $ ZK exceeded 900 million US dollars, and the market value after completely diluted was about $ 5.2 billion.According to CoinMarketcap data, $ ZK ranks 79th in the global cryptocurrency market, ranked 7th among all Layer 2 projects, between StarkNet and AEVO.

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Ecological construction

Since ZKSYNC’s main network on March 24, 2023, although its overall scale has maintained a leading size, users’ participation in their willingness and profit capture capabilities are significantly declining.This phenomenon is closely related to the insufficient number of ecological projects and the degree of importance to the community.

As of June 17, 2024, according to L2 Beat data, the total lock volume of ZKSYNCRA was US $ 765 million, a decline in about US $ 990 million on March 12.

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Although the total number of locks in ZKSYNC ecological projects is relatively high, the number and diversity of projects are still insufficient.According to ZKSYNC-DAPPRADAR data, as of June 17, 205 ecological projects have covered the DEFI, games, trading markets, NFT, social, wallets, and DEX.However, DEFILLAMA data shows that only 5 ZKSYNC projects have more than 10 million US dollars, accounting for 58.5%of the overall lock volume.Among the top 10 projects in TVL, it is mainly concentrated in the DEX and borrowing tracks, and well -known high -quality projects are less deployed on ZKSYNC.

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From the perspective of the number of users and funds, as of June 17, the cumulative number of users of ZKSYNCRA was 3,434,121, the number of bridges was 2,382,454, and the total volume bridge of ETH was 3,878,944, an increase of about 66.8%from the beginning of the year, but the average of each wallet per wallet was increased.The number of address bridges is low, only 1.031 ETH.In the past two months, the ZKSYNC chain activity has decreased significantly, and the number of daily bridges has decreased significantly. For example, only 160 single -day bridges were connected on June 16, and it fell to only dozens of strokes from 12 to 15.ZKSYNC’s daily number of users also fell sharply. On June 16th, ZKSYNC Era’s daily active users were 183, 12 people were LITE, and a total of 195 people.About 98.73%.

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Data source: dune @outputlayer

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Data source: dune @sixdegree

And before the announcement of the airdrop rules, although the participation of a large number of “Mao Party” brought huge benefits to ZKSYNC ERA, it also affected the healthy development of its overall ecology.As of May 1, ZKSYNC Era’s profit generated by GAS costs in the past four months was about 1848 ETH, accounting for 10.3%of the total profit of the Rollup chain, but there is still a significant gap compared with Base, Arbitrum and Scroll.And the monthly profit shows a downward trend.

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Data source: dune @niftytable

ETH LAYER2 track

Layer2’s daily total transaction volume has greatly exceeded the main network of Ethereum.At present, Layer2 mainly includes six solutions: status channels, side chains, Plasma, Optimistic Rollup, Validium, and Zkrollup.

In these solutions, Optimistic Rollup occupies the main market share of Layer2.As a representative project of Optimistic Rollup, Arbitrum accounts for 40.4%of the Layer2 market; Base and OP account for 17.12%and 15.67%, respectively.In contrast, ZKSYNC’s ZKSYNC accounts for only 1.76%of the Layer2 market.

The main network of Optimistic Rollup projects such as Arbitrum, OP, and seized the opportunity in ecological construction.Arbitrum’s ecological quality is significantly higher than other Layer2 solutions. Its native ecological projects are more well -known, such as Radiant Capital, GMX, Camelot, and Treasure Dao.In contrast, ZKSYNC’s ecological construction is relatively weak.

According to L2 Beat data, ZKSYNC Era’s TVL ranked 9th in the Layer2 project, after Manta.Layer2’s market share is mainly occupied by Rollup, of which Arbitrum’s TVL is $ 2.4 billion, accounting for 51.6%; Optimism’s TVL is $ 1.43 billion, accounting for 30.56%.

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STAGE showed by the figure above: In order to better distinguish between and define ROLLUP, Vitalik et al. Based on the Rollup project’s dependence on the auxiliary wheel/artificial intervention, Rollup is divided into 3 levels: Stage 0, Stage 1, and Stage 2.ZKSYNC Era is divided into STAGE 0, that is, completely rely on the auxiliary wheels to meet the minimum standard of Rollup.

Community construction

Community scale

ZKSYNC has a large community with a total scale of more than 2 million people.It has 1.4 million followers on the X platform, and the Discord community also has 779,000 members.This huge user foundation shows the influence of ZKSYNC in the market and community activity.

Airdrop storm

Recently, ZKSYNC’s release of airdrop rules has aroused extensive dissatisfaction in the community.The airdrop rules set up on -chain interaction, asset value and time on the chain to occupy important weights, but the witch testing method is relatively simple.In the end, only 10% of the more than 6 million wallet addresses were qualified for airdrops, far lower than expected.In addition, many ecological projects have also been excluded from the airdrop list, causing many questions.Members of Chinese community expressed disappointment with the leadership of Matter Labs and believed that they were unbalanced in the consideration of community interests.

The NFT market ELEMEN also posted a tweet that, as the largest NFT market on ZKSYNC, they did not receive any airdrops and questioned whether it was a joke; ZKAPES also tweeted that the platform generated $ 15 million GAS fee, butFailure to receive any airdrops.

Ecological RUG event

The airdrop storm is not the first time that ZKSYNC has ignored the interests of the community for the first time.Earlier many RUG incidents caused the user’s rights and interests to be damaged, and the community was dissatisfied with the official inaction.For example, the ZKSYNC lending agreement Eralend loses 3.4 million US dollars due to Lightning Loan attacks, Xbank Finance loses $ 550,000 due to hacking, and the ZKASINO incident.Although some projects were arrested for sale or attackers, ZKSYNC officials failed to effectively protect user interests.Community members believe that the ZKSYNC team has not fulfilled the ecological construction, but is more concerned about GAS income.This poor management and indifference to user rights will bring greater challenges to ZKSYNC.

Summarize

ZKSYNC is the Ethereum Layer 2 expansion solution developed by Matter Labs. It achieves faster and low -cost transactions through zero -knowledge proof and Rollup architecture.Its core components include ZKEVM, account abstraction, ZKPORTER, etc., highlighting its innovation in terms of security and availability.However, due to the complexity of technology, ZKSYNC requires more time and resources than the Optimistic Rollup project.Although with a huge community and sufficient financing support, its ecological construction and user participation still face challenges, especially in the airdrop distribution and Rug event processing, which affects the community’s trust and market performance.