TVL growth is sluggish, technology loses advantage, token airdrop will be Starknet's last hole card?

Author: Haotian

They are all looking forward to @Starknet airdrop can inject a shot of strength into the Layer2 industry, how much and how? It’s not clear yet, but one thing is certain, the time has come when the ZK-Rollup echelon has to send an airdrop to “save the market”.

In my opinion, this wave of airdrop catalyst will be a self-redeeming operation for ZK-Rollup. Why？

1. It is said that ZK-Rollup is the endgame of the layer2 Rollup solution, and in front of ZK-Rollup, OP-Rollup is the transition solution, which will be eliminated sooner or later.

In terms of absolute technology, the debate over the merits of OP-Rollup and ZK-Rollup has been going on for far too long.

FinalityProof gives a definite state on a per-transaction basis compared to the 7-day optimistic challenge period that Fraud Proof exists, and from a personal Sovereignist perspective, there is no doubt that the future of Rollups must be ZK-Rollups.

According to L2Beat data, 26 out of 65 rollup projects have ZK-Rollup solutions, compared to 21 OP-Rollups.

Among these ZK-Rollup solutions, Scroll and Taiko pursue the ultimate EVM equivalence and aim to improve compatibility with the ETH mainnet. zkSync and Starknet pursue the comprehensive expansion capability of the chain, trying to increase incremental users by improving transaction processing speed and throughput on the mainnet. Aztec is focused on addressing transaction privacy issues through ZK; Others, such as dYdX and zkSYnc Lite, are tapping into the potential of ZK technology in the direction of transaction and payment.

Overall, the ZK-Rollup technology is becoming more and more segmented, and it is starting to focus too much on the details to achieve a more extreme technical narrative: such as tight circuit efficiency and full EVM equivalence. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing extreme technology, but don’t forget that ZK itself is a high technical threshold, and excessive pursuit of technology will cause teams to ignore the user experience and ignore the original purpose of ZK to solve practical problems.

For the ZK-Rollup project, we should balance the technical pursuit and the actual market demand, with the goal of improving the feasibility and high user experience of ZK technology, and do not immerse ourselves in the technical narrative of to VC (I will not name it).

2. Although Starknet’s airdrop distribution criteria are not clear, the value orientation and purpose of its airdrop are well known, for example, distributing STRK to DApp developers to incentivize them to build projects; Distribute STRK to ECMP early community contributors (contents, meetups, workshops, etc.), distribute 900 million STRK for future user rebates, and more.

It is not difficult to see that Starknet’s airdrop distribution will care about the contribution and value of individuals, and pay more attention to the long-term ecological incentive effect of airdrops. Therefore, I judge that the scale of STRK airdrop will definitely reach the “cool point” of most people, which is the switch to stimulate everyone’s enthusiasm to continue to contribute to ZK-Rollup, in addition, most of the tokens will be bound through Paymaster and Transaction, and will be released linearly as a GAS fee subsidy in the future ecological contribution.

If you look at Starknet’s disastrous TVL data and the cross-user trading experience, you must understand why you need to engage in trading rebates. Although the Mao Party has contributed a lot of TXS in the early days, it is not enough, so simply make rebates with open cards, and you can continue to brush it, it is better to be violent.

After all, the contribution of the Mao Party is also real. This seems to mean that retroactive airdrops may be weaker than potential future airdrops, and Starknet’s airdrop incentive game is just starting to play out, and it’s impossible for you to come up and eat the cake and disperse.

Tokenomics is a double-edged sword, like Starknet, a project party that talks about the team, the capital behind it, and the technology are all very strong, and it is easy not to use Tokenomics as a sharp weapon.

But in the face of the current bleak ecological situation, in addition to the last hole card of Tokenomics, how can the story of ZK-Rollup be continued?