
Our weekly updates are put together by folks deep in the crypto scene, giving you a clear picture of what's happening without overwhelming you.

To Watch This Week
AIRDROPS + ALPHAJun 17, 2024

Markets
zkSync Airdrop: Almost Half of ZK Tokens Claimed Amid Tech Issues and Sybil Backlash
Ethereum scaling solution zkSync has run into some issues during its highly anticipated and controversial ZK token airdrop. "The network is currently under high load. Some RPC services may experience degraded performance," the team wrote on Twitter Monday morning. At the time of writing, the team has not yet said that the issues have been resolved. But despite the ongoing issues, ZK Nation—the community created to govern the ecosystem and token—said 45% of the airdropped tokens had already been...
Jun 11, 2024

DeFi
ZkSync Will Airdrop 3.7 Billion ZK Tokens to User Wallets Next Week
ZkSync will begin distributing two-thirds of its 21 billion ZK token supply to community wallets next week in what will be the largest token distribution from an Ethereum scaling project. An initial airdrop of 17.5% of the tokens will take place next week and the rest will be distributed through ecosystem initiatives and governance measures voted on by the newly created ZK Nation. The airdropped tokens, which will be distributed to 695,232 wallets, will be fully liquid on day one and not be subj...
Jun 3, 2024

Business
Matter Labs Pulls ZK Trademark Application After Backlash
Matter Labs, the corporate entity behind Ethereum layer 2 scaling protocol zkSync, has abandoned plans to register the term "ZK" as a trademark. In a tweet Sunday, the firm said that it had taken the decision to "drop all trademark applications for the term 'ZK',"as a result of conversations with those who had reached out following the announcement of its trademark application. Matter Labs stated that, "it would be impossible to agree on a group of people perceived as credibly neutral by nearly...
Jul 17, 2023

Technology
Ethereum Scaling Solution zkSync Unveils Latest Prover Tech ‘Boojum’
zkSync is taking yet another step to decentralize. Named after a mythical creature found in Lewis Carroll’s poem ‘The Hunting of the Snark,’ the team behind zkSync has launched the latest upgrade to the speedy layer-2 network. The launch is in so-called mainnet shadow mode, per the team, as part of the launch's phased rollout. This mode is a testing zone that runs in parallel to the mainnet. zkSync is a novel scaling solution for Ethereum and one of the few that use zero-knowledge (zk) rollups t...
Apr 1, 2023

DeFi
An Arbitrum Airdrop and Two zkEVM Launches: Welcome to Rollup Season
Decrypting DeFi is Decrypt's DeFi email newsletter. (art: Grant Kempster) A layer-2 airdrop and two mainnet launches has the market clamoring for more scaling action. On March 23, Arbitrum finally distributed its highly-anticipated ARB token, decentralizing its inventory into the hands of its most dedicated users. The hype was so fierce, though, that it took down the project’s main website as well as that of Arbiscan—Arbitrum’s Etherscan equivalent—because eligible wallets could claim their aird...
Mar 24, 2023

Technology
Ethereum Scaling Solution zkSync Launches Alpha Mainnet
A day after Arbitrum’s public airdrop, another Ethereum scaler is launching its own offering. Matter Labs’ zkSync Era is now open to users to begin bridging and using the layer-2 technology. It’s the final step in a phased mainnet launch that began in 2019. Rollups allow Ethereum to scale by moving transactions off of the mainnet, and onto a layer-2 network like zkSync. Users can then go about their business on this second network, with transactions being batched and compressed into a small piec...
Nov 16, 2022

Business
Matter Labs Raises $200M to Scale Ethereum With zkSync Solution
The development team behind Ethereum scaling solution zkSync, Matter Labs, has just raised a fresh $200 million. Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly co-led the Series C round and was joined by Variant, a16z, and LightSpeed Venture Partners. Investment giants a16z also contributed funding to the project back in November, leading Matter Labs’ Series B. zkSync is one of many different technical approaches to scaling the Ethereum mainnet. As the “zk” indicates, the technology uses zero-knowledge pro...
Nov 3, 2022

DeFi
Aave Votes to Deploy on Ethereum Layer-2 Solution zkSync
Following a three-day voting period, Aave community members approved Matter Labs' proposal to deploy the decentralized lending protocol Aave on its Ethereum scaling product zkSync. Matter Labs is the development team behind the layer-2 scaling solution. Nearly all voters supported the proposal, while a mere 0.02% abstained. More than 561,000 Aave governance tokens (AAVE) were used in the voting process. However, the approved proposal is to deploy Aave to zkSync’s testnet. For mainnet deployment...