Airdrops were created as a marketing tool before the ICO era, rewarding traders for promoting the project and holding its token for a certain period of time,
Arbitrum, a layer-2 Ethereum scalability protocol, announced the airdrop for its governance token ARB on March 16, and eligible receivers are expected to get the token by March 23. The hype around its airdrop has now helped another layer-2 solution zkSync, to see significant week-over-week growth.
zkSync is another layer-2 scaling solution or Ethereum that supports native L2 NFT and atomic swaps as well as transfers of ETH and ERC20 tokens within the Ethereum network.
According to data shared by crypto on-chain analytic firm Nansen, more than 39,000 addresses have bridged over $871 million to zkSync in the last seven days. The rise in number of addresses bridging to zkSync has swelled by 5X in the last week.
After the Arbitrum airdrop, zkSync and StarkNet are regarded as the upcoming airdrops with the most potential value. On March 17, nearly 5,000 people deposited more than 536 Ether (ETH) using the zkSync Bridge, and nearly 3,000 users deposited more than 234 ETH using the StarkNet Bridge.
Although zkSync neither have a native token yet nor it has announced any airdrop, the enthusiasm around the Arbitrum airdrop has fueled many proponents to believe they would be rewarded in the near future just like the Arbitrum.
The hype around the airdrops could be understood from the fact that there were multiple fake and scam airdrops being carried out in the name of Arbitrum.
Be aware of a fake @arbitrum Twitter account which is advertising a token Airdrop.
Do not interact with this Airdrop.
Always verify Twitter accounts and URLs from trusted sources.
Stay vigilant! pic.twitter.com/gTlSNRzd6l
— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) March 19, 2023
A crypto airdrop is a promotional tool for crypto projects to generate hype around the project. The crypto projects behind these airdrops often directly deposit digital tokens into the wallets of active blockchain community members as a gift. Many of these airdrops have certain pre-set eligibility criteria that reward users for spreading awareness around the project.
Although very popular during the early stages of the crypto ecosystem with the first airdrop coming in 2014, the marketing strategy has dimmed down in recent times, owing to regulatory scrutiny.
Related: Ethereum layer-2 solutions may focus less on token incentives in the future
Not all crypto airdrops are equally valuable owing to multiple factors such as the people behind the projects, the use cases that the project offers and much more, However, Arbitrum, Optimism, and ZkSync are some of the early layer-2 solutions with a proven records. This has attracted more traders to aim for the airdrop as it would prove to be more valuable than the usual crypto airdrops.
