ARB Airdrop by the Numbers, zkSync zkEVM Launch, and More
7 Highlights from the World of Digital Assets
In this issue:
Arbitrum Airdrop by the Numbers
zkSync Launches zkEVM
Tool for Catching Future Airdrops
DefiLlama Adds Active Addresses by Chain
Bitcoin Innovation Boom
Reddit Launches Token-Gated Communities
Qualifying for the Layer Zero Airdrop
Arbitrum Airdrop by the Numbers
This week, many people received 4 or even 5 figures in the ARB airdrop. One of the most-anticipated events of the year crashed the Arbitrum and Arbiscan websites and produced predictably extreme on-chain metrics. Here are a few of them.
Arbitrum daily transactions spiked to 2.7M:
Arbitrum DEX volume jumped to $1.2B for 2 days in a row:
$157M of stablecoins were bridged onto Arbitrum in a single day:
And if you’re interested in tracking how many people have claimed their Arbitrum airdrop so far, EL DIPsy made an incredible Dune dashboard for that:
zkSync Launches zkEVM
In a major milestone for Ethereum scaling, zkSync launched its zkEVM mainnet this week. This differs from past zk-rollups in that it is Ethereum-compatible, meaning that existing Ethereum projects can easily deploy there.
ZK-rollups are considered by many to be the future of Ethereum scaling and zkSync already has many projects lined up to launch there.
If you’re looking for a primer on zkSync, this thread goes into great detail:
Tool for Catching Future Airdrops
The ARB airdrop has inspired many people to prepare for potential future airdrops.
One great tool I came across for this is airdrops.io. This site lists hundreds of confirmed and potential airdrops for you to explore.
DefiLlama Adds Active Addresses by Chain
DefiLlama added Active Users (addresses) by chain to their page of chain metrics.
This page now shows number of protocols, TVL, Active Addresses, Stablecoins, 24h DEX Volume, and Fees. It’s a great first place to go to see the stats on a chain.
Bitcoin Innovation Booms
Bitcoin DeFi is having its moment. In addition to Stacks, which I covered in last week’s issue, other important developments are being built on Bitcoin. This thread goes through new Ordinals innovations and the proposed NUSD stablecoin:
The extraordinary growth of Ordinals has already had a major impact on the Bitcoin network:
Block sizes have skyrocketed
Transaction fees for miners are up
Reddit Launches Token-Gated Communities
Reddit is apparently experimenting with token-gated communities. These sorts of community-based tokens in existing online communities have the potential to onboard massive numbers of people to crypto.
Qualifying for the Layer Zero Airdrop
Now that the ARB airdrop is behind us, one of the most promising future airdrops is Layer Zero. This thread lays out how you might be able to qualify:
That’s all for this week. For more frequent content, follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
Until next time,
Patrick Scott
Dynamo DeFi