In the past two days, @Starknet has launched a super large airdrop operation targeting 1.3 million addresses with a total amount of over 700 million pieces. It has almost taken care of everyone involved in the ecology at all levels. It’s a great pattern! So, how do you view the subsequent impact of this Starknet airdrop feast? Let me share my thoughts:
1) The standard, scale and coverage of airdrops issued by Starknet have always been laggards. Various scandals and rumors continued. Many people even thought that they were going to be collectively "repulsed". In this context, it suddenly announced that it had over 1.3 million addresses. , 700 million STRK Eligible, I believe has made many people overjoyed.
To be honest, as a popular project that has been heavily discussed, Starknet’s airdrop standard design is really difficult to deal with. It needs to balance the interests of all parties and avoid the selling pressure of the airdrop from overriding the incentive effect, so it is difficult to have an absolutely satisfactory result. In the end, Starknet chose to provide a large-scale favor to early ECMP contributors, GitHub open source developers, Starknet users, etc.
This is likely to be the final choice for focus projects such as zkSync and LayerZero. When the brand influence reaches a certain level, the sun-drenched airdrop operation is the most sensible. The difference lies in which hair-pullers will be screened out according to what criteria, and which direction will become the project party’s preference? For example, Starknet clearly favors developers and early ECMP contributor groups. At best, the "hairing" business increases the risk, loses the cost-effectiveness of input and output, and will continue to be involved.
2) Previously, I have published an article saying that Starknet’s airdrop is a “redemption action”. The reason is that ZK series Layer 2 projects have stayed in the narrative stage of technical advantages for a long time, with developer resources, ecological projects, market TVL, and user volume The implementation of comprehensive data indicators in various aspects such as , user experience and so on is far less than expected. In this case, the purpose of coming up with the trump card of Tokenomics is more to further build and strengthen the ecological market. Obviously, both Starknet and zkSync are worried about this.
In particular, the overall lock-up data of Layer 2 exceeds 25.5B, while the proportion of Layer 2 ranked among the top 5 brand reputations is less than 0.2B. How can such data give confidence to subsequent secondary market investors? And issuing Tokens to subsidize developers and users can quickly make up for this shortcoming. If you don’t believe that Tokenomics has such a great magic power, you can appreciate it by looking at Blast, which has already exceeded US$1.8 billion in TVL before the technology has been implemented.
I personally tend to believe that Tokenomics will bring continuous power to the ZK ecosystem, especially since STRK participates in the project development and user interactive experience process as a Gas fee subsidy, there is still a lot of room for imagination.
3) The Cancun upgrade has a significantly greater market boost for ZK-Rollup than OP-Rollup. If the Cancun upgrade is the icing on the cake for OP-Rollup, then it must be a timely help for ZK-Rollup. I have analyzed the reason before. With the same Blob block capacity, ZK series Layer 2 can enlarge the upper limit of Layer 2 TPS, thereby reducing the Gas amortization cost. Coupled with the potential Gas subsidy war, in theory, there will be more Developers and users flocked to the ZK ecosystem to build. Under normal circumstances, the Cancun upgrade will be a turning point for the ZK ecosystem to catch up in all aspects and counterattack OP.
Starknet rushed to launch Tokenomics before the Cancun upgrade, which undoubtedly expressed its determination to fight against the odds after the Cancun upgrade. If Starknet's Token economics works, it will inevitably promote the issuance of Tokens for ZK-based projects such as zkSync, Scroll, and Linea. Moreover, the potential of ZK technology is ultimately driven by "applications". The market needs to have several popular applications such as games to drive further prosperity of the Starknet market ecosystem.
4) The current Layer 2 competition landscape has become complex and anxious. In the past, Layer projects with first-mover advantages such as technology and brand reputation represented by Arbitrum, Starknet, zkSync, etc. all faced greater pressure from expected implementation, and Stack's strategic approach is still the traditional To B VC narrative thinking, which is obviously not attractive enough to attract secondary market investors;
At the same time, a large number of new challengers have emerged trying to break the Layer 2 pattern. For example, Metis has come up with decentralized Sequencer and native Token economy to try to overtake in a corner. Manta, ZKFair, Blast, etc. are all trying to use the market, The power of operation and maintenance and capital came to counterattack.
In addition, Celestia, Altlayer, Espresso, etc. use modular thinking to continue to add new variables to the Layer 2 market. The current Layer 2 market can no longer use established advantages such as technical strength and capital background to lock in market position. Under the waves of market impact and competition, the last ones to survive must be Layer 2 with balanced comprehensive strength in all aspects. project. Within a year after the upgrade in Cancun, market competition will intensify, and there may be new Layer 2 Four Kings.
Note: I was lucky enough to receive the ECMP airdrop, which is an incentive to continue to output valuable content. Anyway, everyone should have more confidence and expectations in the Layer 2 market.
