Mainnet Launch Two Months On: An Overview of ZKsync's Ecosystem Development
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Mainnet Launch Two Months On: An Overview of ZKsync's Ecosystem Development
zkSync has been live for two months—how has its network ecosystem developed? Let's find out.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights
zkSync is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution based on ZK Rollups architecture. It launched its mainnet under the "Fair Onboarding Alpha" phase on February 16, 2023, during which only registered projects were allowed to test, with no access for end users. On March 24, 2023, zkSync Era opened fully to the public, with zkSync 2.0 being renamed zkSync Era and zkSync 1.0 rebranded as zkSync Lite.
Now that zkSync has been live for two months, how is its ecosystem developing? Let's take a closer look.
1. TVL
zkSync Era’s TVL showed steady growth during its first three weeks, plateaued after mid-April, and began recovering since mid-May. The current TVL stands at $283 million, up 9.5% over the past week, accounting for 3.29% of total Layer 2 TVL and ranking fourth among L2 networks.
2. On-Chain Activity
According to blockchain explorer data, zkSync Era has processed approximately 21 million transactions since launch, with 1.7 million unique addresses. Benefiting from Arbitrum’s airdrop effect, zkSync achieved high on-chain activity upon launch, with daily active addresses fluctuating between 60k and 80k initially. This dropped to around 30k in early May before rebounding significantly due to promotional campaigns and airdrops.
On May 11, OKX Wallet launched Cryptopedia, an all-in-one DApp exploration and airdrop interaction platform, featuring zkSync Era as its inaugural theme and establishing a dedicated interaction zone. Users who completed tasks could not only earn potential airdrop rewards but also win one of five different rarity NFTs co-designed by OKX Wallet and zkSync. This campaign significantly boosted on-chain activity on zkSync Era. Additionally, OKX enabled deposits and withdrawals for zkSync Era assets on May 20.
The metaverse project zkApes on zkSync Era launched its $ZAT token airdrop on May 10 and later shortened the claim window to just one week. Prior to the deadline on May 17, on-chain activity on zkSync Era reached a new peak. On the day the airdrop concluded, $ZAT had 655,000 holder addresses, surpassing USDC to become the second most-held token on zkSync Era, behind only ETH.
On May 21, ERA Name Service (ENS-style domain platform for zkSync Era) conducted its $ERA token airdrop, with 43,500 addresses participating.
3. Cross-Chain Fund Flows
Official bridge data reflects similar activity trends. In the first three weeks after mainnet launch—spurred by Arbitrum airdrop incentives—active addresses surged. From mid-April to early May, activity declined. However, starting mid-May, both transaction volume and active addresses resumed upward momentum.
4. Ecosystem Projects
According to DefiLlama, the top five projects by TVL in the zkSync Era ecosystem are all decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
SyncSwap offers trading, liquidity mining, and a launchpad (not yet launched). Currently, 85% of its TVL is concentrated in the USDC/ETH pool, with an APR of 25%.
SyncSwap plans to issue 100 million SYNC tokens (platform token, not yet launched) and launched a trading rewards program called “SyncSwap Loyalty Program” on April 10. A total of 900,000 SYNC tokens were allocated for the genesis epoch, which lasted 30 days and ended on May 10.
Users earned 1 ySYNC for every $1 of trading fees paid. During the genesis epoch, users minted a total of 1.18 million ySYNC (indicating $1.18 million in fees), and the 900,000 SYNC tokens were distributed proportionally. Ultimately, each ySYNC entitled holders to approximately 0.76 SYNC. The program is currently paused post-genesis.
iZUMi Finance is a multi-chain, one-stop Liquidity-as-a-Service (LaaS) protocol currently supporting ETH, Arbitrum, Polygon, and zkSync Era.
iZiSwap employs an innovative Discretized Liquidity AMM (DL-AMM) mechanism, similar to Trader Joe’s Liquidity Book. Although iZUMi introduced this earlier, it did not gain the same level of attention at the time. DL-AMM improves capital efficiency by concentrating liquidity at specific price points. Additionally, iZiSwap Pro offers an order book trading model.
LiquidBox is iZUMi’s liquidity mining solution based on Uniswap V3 LP positions. Project teams can use LiquidBox to incentivize LPs within specific price ranges, allowing users to stake their V3 LP tokens into the iZUMi protocol to earn targeted rewards.
There is a significant discrepancy between DeFiLlama and iZUMi’s official website regarding protocol metrics. The chart below shows TVL and trading volume according to the official site.
The platform token IZI launched in December 2021 and is listed on exchanges such as Bybit, KuCoin, and Gate. After a prolonged downtrend, IZI showed a clear rebound following zkSync’s mainnet launch in April this year.
Mute was among the first DEXs on zkSync Era. Beyond trading and liquidity provision, Mute offers Amplifier (yield booster), bonds, and DAO governance. Users can purchase MUTE tokens at a discount using MUTE/ETH LP tokens through bonds, with a 7-day lock-up period. MUTE is listed on Bitget and spiked in price upon zkSync Era’s launch, followed by a general downward trend. Currently, most TVL is in the USDC/ETH pool, offering an APR of 28%.
Velocore is the first ve(3,3)-based DEX on zkSync Era, built on Solidly and Velodrome. It held private and public sales on April 3 and 4, 2023, via its launchpad. The private sale had a hard cap of 90 ETH and the public sale 450 ETH, achieving over 500% and 1814% oversubscription, respectively. Sale prices were 0.0000207 ETH (~$0.037) and 0.0000229 ETH (~$0.041). The token peaked at nearly 6x its initial price and currently trades around 2x.
SpaceFi is a cross-chain platform connecting Cosmos and Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystems, currently integrating Evmos and zkSync. Its product suite includes DEX + NFT + Launchpad + Spacebase. Spacebase is an on-chain community where creating or joining increases mining rewards. So far, 18 Spacebases have been created, with about 30,000 participants. On May 6, SpaceFi adjusted its $SPACE tokenomics, reducing max supply from 600 million to 100 million and burning 40 million from the initial supply. The current circulating market cap is only $780,000, with low trading volume.
Zigzag is a decentralized order-book exchange and the first DEX on zkSync 1.0. It currently supports zkSync Lite and Arbitrum. On March 3, 2023, over 100,000 users received the $ZZ token airdrop, representing 34% of the total supply. The Zigzag team also developed zkasino, a decentralized betting platform accepting bet tokens including USDC, USDT, ZZ, and ETH.
Nexon, one of the earliest lending protocols on zkSync Era, has since been rebranded as Eralend. According to its disclosed token model, 61% of tokens are allocated for community incentives, 10% for IDO, 15% to the DAO, 12% to the team, and 2% to advisors, with team and advisor allocations subject to a 6-month vesting period. Due to delayed token launch and competition from other active protocols, Eralend’s TVL growth has been slow, hovering around $2.5 million.
Reactor Fusion is currently the largest lending protocol on zkSync Era by TVL and one of the few projects on zkSync to issue a token. With a TVL of approximately $3.43 million, it currently supports only ETH and USDC.
UniDex is a derivatives DEX protocol founded in April 2022, initially on Fantom and later expanded to Optimism, zkSync Era, and other chains. It currently holds $3.87 million in TVL, with about $1.6 million on zkSync Era.
Onchain Trade is a spot and derivatives DEX built on zkSync Era, with a modest TVL of $670,000. Its native token OT held an IFO in March 2023 at a public sale price of $0.15. The token briefly rose to nearly $1 after listing but has since declined, currently trading around $0.18.
Cheems is a meme project on zkSync Era. From May 4 to 6, users with wallet balances exceeding 0.01 ETH or holding $PEPE or $AIDOGE could claim $Cheems tokens. A total of 65,000 addresses participated, with 51,000 current holders. The circulating market cap is $27 million, and the token still offers substantial returns compared to its initial price.
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