Six airdrop projects worth watching

Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo, DLNews; Compiler: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

• Airdrop hopefuls continue to develop tokenless projects.

• Cryptocurrencies are driving investor deposits.

• Airdrop recipients have not been swayed by project teams’ attempts to deny the possibility of token distributions.

April has been a big month for airdrops, as several major crypto protocols have launched their native tokens and rewarded early adopters.

Stablecoin protocol Ethena issued a $500 million airdrop to 90,000 eligible users. Others including crypto bridge Wormhole and Solana-based real estate futures market Parcl have followed suit.

As April comes to an end, airdrop chasers are turning to other targets — DeFi protocols without native tokens.

While tokenless projects like interoperability protocol LayerZero have promised users future airdrops, others like Ethereum recapture giant EigenLayer have been reluctant to commit to possible token distribution events.

Nevertheless, airdrop chasers can point to the points programs launched by some of these projects as possible indicators, especially since projects including Parcl and liquidity re-staking protocol Ether.fi have converted their points into airdrops.

When users are ready for an airdrop, the anticipation often leads to a flood of liquidity onto the platform. While the current market slowdown has hampered the price gains of crypto tokens earlier this year, here are some of the projects that are attracting hope.

Zircuit

Zircuit is an Ethereum Rollup that uses zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic technique for verifying transactions without revealing all the data they contain.

Zircuit has yet to launch its mainnet. That’s expected to happen in the summer, but that hasn’t stopped airdroppers from flocking to the protocol’s testnet, with nearly $2.5 billion in deposits committed to Zircuit staking this month.

Early adopters who deposit funds with Zircuit are rewarded with points for doing so. As always, it’s expected that these points will be converted into Zircuit’s native token in the future, but the project team has yet to announce such plans.

In addition to Zircuit points, depositors can also earn points from the project’s partners, including Renzo, EigenLayer, and eOracle — the latter two of which remain tokenless.

EigenLayer

EigenLayer is the second largest protocol in DeFi in terms of investor deposits, with a TVL of $15.4 billion.

The protocol is at the center of the restaking hype - a buzzy new crypto that involves staking already staked Ethereum.

The growth of these deposits was driven by the widespread belief that EigenLayer would airdrop its tokens to early adopters.

In recent months, the protocol’s developer, Eigen Labs, has refused to reveal whether an airdrop was imminent, simply telling users on Discord that “there are no tokens.”

Nevertheless, this denial could be a tactic by the developer to evade scrutiny from U.S. regulators.

Karak

Karak is another player in the restaking space. This emerging protocol is by no means a major competitor to EigenLayer — at least not yet — but it is valued at $1 billion. It has managed to attract $400 million in investor deposits since its private launch in early April.

Unlike EigenLayer, which runs exclusively on Ethereum, Karak supports restaking on Arbitrum and its native blockchain, the Karak network. The protocol also allows for re-staking of assets other than Ethereum, including stablecoins and various forms of liquidity staking Ethereum.

Karak also has a points program - users are rewarded with XP for depositing funds and referring others. XP is similar to points, and it is expected that token airdrops will eventually be provided for early adopters.

The protocol has not yet announced plans to convert XP into airdrops.

friend.tech

Social networking platform friend.tech experienced a renaissance this month, launching a second version called V2 and the possibility of an airdrop.

Earlier this month, the platform saw $7.4 million in user deposits in a single day, the largest daily volume since its heyday in late October.

A lively market emerged on the friend.tech points market following reports that the project would airdrop 100% of its total token supply.

This is an outlier for cryptocurrency airdrops, as the tokens given away for free are usually a small fraction of a project’s total supply.

LayerZero, zkSync

LayerZero and zkSync are two of the most anticipated cryptocurrency airdrops.

Both have seen a significant amount of activity over the past two years.

Both have seen a significant amount of activity over the past two years.

The developers behind both projects have confirmed their planned airdrops of their native tokens.

LayerZero is expected to be released before the end of the first half of this year, but little is known about the timing of zkSync token distribution.