ZK Sync Airdrop: Not the End Game, Yet..

For all airdrop hunters out there whether newbie or veteran, whether e-beggoor or big time whale everyone was eagerly waiting for the ZK Sync airdrop. I am not sure when the trend started exactly but at some point everyone started labelling it the “End Game”. Honestly speaking I was not entirely sure what that meant but I vaguely assumed it meant it will be the end to all the hustle and grind and everyone will get so much liquidity that it would be like instant retirement from our daily 9 to 5 drudgeries.

I did hear a faint voice from the back of my mind saying if millions are grinding for this with multiple wallets then where will so much liquidity come from but I chose to ignore that thought.

I took the Hopium that ZK Sync is the end game and kept grinding more and more and in fact for the first time created multiple wallets and started grinding from all of them.

Airdrop Allocation- Was the Sybil criteria Fair?

Looking at the recent big airdrops it was pretty much expected that ZK Sync was also going to put in controls to filter out Sybils to discourage farmers getting unfair advantage.

I can’t say I was much surprised when I saw that all the new wallets I had created were not eligible for the airdrop. They were all new so close to a year in operation and I did only basic cheap transactions on them.

Luckily my main wallet which is my oldest wallet was eligible for a decent allocation of 6,478 ZK tokens. I was not in the top tier of 10K and above allocation but I was still happy as I thought many old timers grinding for ZK were declared ineligible for some random sybil criteria.

Token Valuation- Expectations Vs Reality!

While grinding for the airdrop I was expecting the airdrop value will be at least $20K+ and will go up to $200K for the lucky ones which will be life changing, end game etc.

When I looked at my allocation of 6,478 tokens and the expected valuations in the range of $0.2 to $0.6, it was clear that this was not going to be a life changing or end game in any manner for me. The actual listing price was around $0.4 so I must say that the estimates shared by Crypto Twitter experts was pretty accurate. What happened next was not expected by me. It seems that the majority of the community started FUDing ZK and the tag ZKscam started trending.

I think this is a consistent pattern now with all the airdrops. All big projects get over farmed with the community. It is impossible to give big airdrops to everyone. Most people are not satisfied with their allocation. They FUD the project and the token price gets hit.

It is pretty evident that the golden days of airdrops are pretty much over. It does not make sense for me to spend big amounts for airdrop grinds anymore as the returns will not be worthwhile.

What Next?

At the time of claiming my airdrop allocation was worth a bit over $2,500. I plan to hold it long term and perhaps sell a part of it once it hits $1 mark. So far the token is struggling as it has now fallen below the $0.2 mark which over 50% correction on listing price.

I will now solely focus on projects with free grind or very low fees for transactions. I feel the airdrop way to get massive returns is pretty much over and we will soon see a new trend emerging in the crypto world. Whether it will be memecoin resurgence or round 2 for Crazy yield farming we will have to wait and watch.

Cheers,

Sam