Source: Daoshuo Blockchain
Earlier, I once wrote an article introducing the involution of the second layer expansion of Ethereum:
From the beginning of each project Fang used technological advancement and user experience as the basis for competition. Later, Blast directly entered the game through marketing methods. Without even seeing the shadow of the "real thing", it quickly surpassed the established projects in TVL in a very short period of time. .
Blast’s way of entering the game put tremendous pressure on all project teams on this track.
Since the Blast project itself has its own aura--its founder is also the founder of Blur, Blast's entry on the one hand steals the limelight of this old project on the track, and on the other hand It also inspired other old projects on the track: borrowing the second layer extension of Ethereum to extend their lives.
So we saw that users in the Boring Ape community initiated a vote, hoping that Boring Ape would also build its own second-layer extension of Ethereum to boost its popularity again.
In the Blast gameplay, users do not need to actually consume Gas fees. They only need to mortgage Ethereum to obtain mortgage income and token airdrops.
I originally thought that this approach was the ultimate, but the emergence of ZKFair has once again refreshed the three views. It directly absorbs all the above advantages and makes it more thorough:
On the one hand, it directly gives airdrops to users who have used other ZK-Rollups to attract users from other projects in the same ecology. On the other hand, it encourages users to cross-chain USDC to obtain airdrops to attract new users off-site.
This is more thorough than Blast in attracting users.
In addition, it heavily promotes its use of Polygon and Celestia to build second-tier extensions. This kind of publicity method directly attracted Polygon and Celestia to promote and support the project.
Blast did not do this.
Under the operation of ZKFair, this project received more than 100 million US dollars in TVL in just two days. This achievement is equivalent to the result of two years of hard work by Starknet.
To achieve such a result in a very short period of time, the project itself has neither its own original technology nor glamorous venture capital, let alone a strong team background like Blast.
This is another complete victory of marketing strategy.
No matter what the real purpose of ZKFair is and what the final product is, its marketing illustrates at least two aspects:
First, it mobilizes the largest community as much as possible and inspires the largest community. Extensive participation in the project can bring a strong boost to the launch of the project. To some extent, this boost even exceeds the boost that venture capital and so-called background can bring.
Second, it is once again proven that airdrops are by far the most powerful and efficient incentive method and method to attract early users.
This time ZKFair’s airdrop returns to some extent the airdrop method pioneered by Uniswap: anyone who participates will be rewarded.
Although Uniswap pioneered the "generous airdrop" method, this method is rarely used by other project parties later because the cost is a bit high.
But ZKFair simply used this method to encourage users to engage in open involution and "witch attacks" together.
The success of this airdrop method will have a profound impact on the entire ecosystem. It sets an example for all latecomers:
When a new project has no background and no When you don’t have capital or technology, you might as well learn ZKFair if you want to start a project.
After Blast came out, I thought in the article: Those projects that once said they would not issue coins may not be able to survive and have to change their policies.
And now there is more powerful marketing like ZKFair to attract popularity and funds.
What’s more, there are a lot of second-tier expansion projects on the schedule that will clearly issue coins.
Recently, even Base, which has always said it will not issue coins, has weakened. How long can those projects that continue to claim “not issue coins” survive?
Next, we will see the Cancun upgrade of Ethereum.
After this upgrade, the cost of second-tier extensions will be further reduced, which in turn will further reduce the threshold and cost for users to use second-tier extensions.
Perhaps the Cancun upgrade is truly the beginning of the expansion of the second layer of Ethereum.