A brief analysis of the subsequent impact on the layer2 market after the Starknet airdrop

Author: Hao Tian; Source: Chain View

In the past two days, @Starknet  targeted 1.3 million people at a time The super-large airdrop operation with a total address count of over 700 million has been implemented, and almost everyone involved in the ecology at all levels has been taken care of, which is a great pattern! So, how do you view the subsequent impact of this Starknet airdrop feast? Let me talk about my thoughts:

1) The standards, scale and coverage of Starknet’s airdrops have always been low, and various scandals and rumors continue. A few people once thought that they were going to be "repulsed" by the collective. In this context, the sudden announcement of Eligible with over 1.3 million addresses and 700 million STRKs has probably made many people overjoyed. To be honest, as a popular project that has been deeply 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 overwhelming the incentive effect. Therefore, 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 sunny 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 prefers developers and early ECMP contributor groups. At best, the "hair-raising" business has increased risks and lost the cost-effectiveness of input and output, and it will continue to be rolled out.

2) Previously, I had published an article saying that Starknet’s airdrop was a “redemption action” because the ZK series layer 2 project has remained in the technology field for a long time. In the advantage narrative stage, the comprehensive data indicators of developer resources, ecological projects, market TVL, user volume, user experience, etc. are far less than expected. In this case, the purpose of bringing out 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 layer2 exceeds 25.5B, and the proportion of layer2 among the top 5 brands in terms of brand reputation 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 pour into 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 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 competitive landscape of layer 2 has become complex and intense. 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, while Stack The strategic approach is still the traditional To B VC narrative thinking, which is obviously not attractive enough to attract investors in the secondary market; at the same time, a large number of new challengers have emerged trying to break the layer 2 pattern. For example, Metis has launched Decentralized Sequencer and native Token economies are trying to overtake others in a corner. Manta, ZKFair, Blast, etc. are all trying to use the power of the market, operation and maintenance, and capital to counterattack and rise to the top. 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 successive waves of market impact and competition, the final survivors must be layer 2 projects with balanced comprehensive strength in all aspects. Within a year after the upgrade in Cancun, market competition will become more intense, and there may be four new layer 2 kings born by then. 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 layer2 market.