Dear Bankless Nation,
Zero-knowledge rollups are rushing to deploy widely and Ethereum's L2 sector is ripe with opportunity. Ethereum's scaling solutions are in dire need of early users and now is the time to join other Bankless users exploring the frontier of rollups!
Today, we're walking you through all seven L2 airdrop opportunities we're tracking, available in full exclusively to you, our paying Bankless Citizens 🫡
- Bankless team
The Bankless Airdrop Guide | July 2023
As the saying goes, crypto pays you to learn crypto, and airdrops are one of the best ways to earn and explore!
The Bankless Airdrop Guide is your home for alpha on web3 projects that you should be interacting with to maximize your chances of airdrops. No strategy is guaranteed, but the right tip may grant you a seat at the governance table of some of crypto’s hottest protocols, not to mention potentially juicy financial returns 📈
This month's guide showcases seven protocols. The first is for everyone, the rest are available exclusively to our Bankless Citizens 🏴
⚪ Linea️
Name: Linea
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: High
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
Linea is the next generation of the ConsenSys zkEVM, aiming to serve the next generation of dApps built on Ethereum while empowering devs with low fees and a scalable blockchain.
The L2 was designed to be as developer-friendly as possible, coming with out-of-the-box support for popular tools, like MetaMask and Truffle. Linea's unique prover design ensures faster transaction speeds and reduced gas costs, without sacrificing security.
On Tuesday, Linea announced that it will begin onboarding users to its Ethereum mainnet deployment during ETHCC next week!
Why we're watching:
Linea kicked off the start of its 9-week Voyage campaign, similar to Arbitrum's Odyssey, back in May 2023. Users accumulated points for completing Galxe quests, and top testers earned the rights to mint a one-of-a-kind NFT at the culmination of the Voyage!
Early-stage project NFTs are often used as a basis to identify a protocol's most dedicated users. Linea's usage of NFTs as rewards to top Voyage participants signals that it will likely conduct a future airdrop. It is likely NFT holders will qualify for an outsized allocation, but we also suspect that early users of this L2 will also have the opportunity to scoop a free LINEA bag.
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Following Linea's Twitter to learn how to get access to mainnet
☐ Getting onto Linea's testnet (works natively with MetaMask!)
☐ Bridging funds to Linea's testnet (use Hop Exchange!)
☐ Funding your wallet with a recommended faucet
☐ Exploring the various dApps Linea currently offers
Learn More:
⚫️ zkSync
Name: zkSync
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: High
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
zkSync’s latest iteration of the L2, Era, is a general-purpose rollup that not only seeks to increase Ethereum's throughput and lower transaction fees, but to fully preserve the chain’s foundational values of freedom, self-sovereignty, and decentralization at scale.
Instead of publishing all transaction inputs, like Polygon’s zkEVM, zkSync only publishes the state differences to Ethereum, theoretically lowering fees by further compressing data and reducing storage costs. Account abstraction is native to zkSync Era, opening the doors for tons of cool wallet features, like gasless transactions and flexible security rules.
Why we're watching:
The Matter Labs Chief Product Officer told CoinDesk that while zkSync will likely be one of the last zero-knowledge rollups to launch a token, two-thirds of the tokens distributed will go towards the zkSync ecosystem, meaning that this drop will likely be meaningful for early users.
It's unclear exactly how or to whom those funds would be disbursed, but we expect to see an airdrop used to allocate a large percentage of these tokens. Failure to do so would break from L2 precedent and would risk irreparable harm to the relationship between zkSync and the chain’s community.
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Adding the zkSync network to your wallet
☐ Bridging to zkSync with Orbiter
☐ Providing liquidity to Maverick’s USDC-LUSD pool in “Mode Both”
☐ Registering an omnichain domain name on zkSync
Learn More:
The web3 ecosystem is an expansive world, full of endless opportunities for those curious enough to explore them! Head over to MetaMask Portfolio to get started, where you can view your assets in one place and discover other features such as Buy, Swap, Bridge, and Stake.
🟣 Polygon zkEVM
Name: Polygon zkEVM
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: Medium
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
Polygon zkEVM is an EVM-equivalent zero-knowledge rollup. It is distinct from the Polygon Proof of Stake chain, which is set to undergo a major upgrade to a zkEVM validium and will remain dependent on the MATIC validator set for data availability. In contrast, the Polygon zkEVM, like other rollups, depends on the Ethereum L1 for data availability.
Why we're watching:
While many initially assumed the Polygon zkEVM would not be airdropping a token to early users, given the existence of MATIC, founder Sandeep Nailwal has hinted at the possibility of one. In a tweet, Nailwal suggests tokens may be airdropped to early users of the Polygon zkEVM, stating "there is no rule that an existing token can't do a massive airdrop 😉"
On July 12, Polygon introduced Polygon 2.0 and announced a transition of the governance token from MATIC to POL. In addition to a variety of technical upgrades, the POL whitepaper notes that token emissions will be directed towards a community treasury. Should the POL community wish to incentivize Polygon zkEVM usage, it is possible an airdrop is deemed the best method to do so.
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Adding the Polygon zkEVM network to your wallet
☐ Bridging funds to Polygon zkEVM using Orbiter
☐ Swapping with Quickswap's Polygon zkEVM deployment
Learn More:
🟤 Scroll
Name: Scroll
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: High
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
Scroll is a zkEVM-based zkRollup on Ethereum that enables native compatibility for existing Ethereum applications and tools. The Layer 2 aims to provide the best possible experience for both developers and users by providing scalability, security, and EVM-equivalence (a step above compatibility).
Why we're watching:
In late February, Scroll announced that its Alpha Testnet was live on Goerli. Two and a half months later, bluechip DeFi protocols are beginning to deploy, providing early adopters with routes to Scroll airdrop eligibility.
The SCRL airdrop is unconfirmed at present, however with mainnet on the horizon and the need to decentralize key network infrastructure in the future, an airdrop can be expected, as they can serve as tools to bootstrap initial liquidity and remain the key to decentralizing protocol ownership. It is highly unlikely that Scroll will break ranks with precedent set by the L2s prior and opt to not airdrop its token.
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Adding the Scroll Alpha testnet to your web3 wallet (do this first!)
☐ Claiming Scroll Alpha testnet tokens and lending on Aave (follow this thread!)
☐ Bridging to Scroll with their native Hop-forked bridge
☐ Swapping tokens on Uniswap
Learn More:
🟣 Taiko
Name: Taiko
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: High
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
Taiko is tackling the challenge of scaling Ethereum, while emulating it as closely as possible, from both the technical and ideological perspectives.
The Taiko team is building an Ethereum-equivalent, Type 1 zkEVM Layer 2 rollup solution, prioritizing compatibility with Ethereum's architecture over minimization of prover costs, which will allow protocols deployed to the L1 to migrate to Taiko without needing to alter their code or deployment environment.
Guiding the development of the Protocol is a "decentralized from day 1" approach. To Taiko, this means deploying with decentralized proposers and provers, allowing anyone to permissionlessly participate at the chain's infrastructure level and earn fees.
Why we're watching:
Layer 2 protocols have previously airdropped tokens to early users and we believe Taiko is no exception! The Protocol is highly aligned with Ethereum values and three of its core principles are decentralization, permissionless-ness, and Ethereum-equivalence; protocols with higher degrees of alignment to Ethereum, like Taiko, are more prone to distributing tokens to their earliest users.
Our belief that Taiko will airdrop a token to its earliest users is further strengthened by Taiko's statement that TTKO balances (the testnet version of the governance token) and block building/proposing activities will be "among the inputs rewarding network participants come mainnet time."
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Completing the Taiko Quest, a Galxe campaign, to collect loyalty points
☐ Enabling a proposer and prover (The most likely way to capture the airdrop, but for technically sophisticated users only)
☐ Adding the "Sepolia" and "Taiko (Alpha-3 Testnet)" testnets to your wallet
☐ Dripping yourself FREE testnet Sepolia ETH (Alchemy, Infura, RockX, and Sepolia PoW are the faucets we recommend)
☐ Requesting BLL and HORSE tokens from Taiko's faucet
☐ Bridging ETH, BLL, and HORSE tokens from Sepolia to Taiko
☐ Swapping assets or providing liquidity on Swap, a Taiko fork of Uniswap V2 deployed for testing purposes only
☐ Accumulating TTKO tokens
Learn More:
- 🐦 Taiko Airdrop Alpha Thread
- 📃 Guides to Using Taiko
- 📃 Taiko Alpha-3 Testnet is Live
- 📃 Taiko Roadmap
- 📃 Taiko Protocol Overview
🔴 Starknet
Name: Starknet
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: Medium
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
Starknet is a permissionless decentralized Validity-Rollup (often referred to as a zkRollup). It operates as an L2 network over Ethereum, enabling any dApp to achieve unlimited scale for its computation – without compromising Ethereum's composability and security. Smart contracts on Ethereum and the majority of L2s are written in Solidity, but Starknet uses Cairo, a Turing-complete programming language designed for STARK proofs.
Why we're watching:
The protocol's team confirmed in a Medium post from July 2022 that 8.1% of the token supply was unallocated. We know that these tokens will be used, "to further support the Starknet community in a manner to be decided by the community," and believe it is highly likely that these tokens will partially be allocated via airdrop to early Starknet participants. Failure to do so would break with L2 precedent set by protocols like Arbitrum and Optimism.
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Downloading a Starknet compatible wallet, like Argent X
☐ Bridging to Starknet with StarkGate
☐ Swapping tokens with JediSwap
Learn More:
🔵 Base
Name: Base
Status: Unconfirmed 🚫
Confidence: Low
Sector: L2
Chains: ETH
About:
Base is an L2 from the Coinbase team built on the open-sourced OP Stack. It will likely serve as the hub for various Coinbase proprietary dApps and is intended to serve as an on-boarding nexus into web3 for the exchange's 110M verified users. As an L2, Base will inherit Ethereum's security while providing users with faster transaction speeds and lower transaction costs.
Deployment to Ethereum mainnet is imminent. Base announced the completion of a thorough protocol audit, meaning that 4 of 5 criteria for a mainnet launch have been fulfilled, with the fifth being "demonstrated testnet stability."
Why we're watching:
While Coinbase has been absolutely clear that they have no plans on issuing a network token at the moment, getting regulatory clarity on token airdrops in the future could clear the path for a BASE token.
Decentralization is key for any permissionless L2; Base chain is no different. While no airdrop is currently in the works, you can certainly still set yourself up to qualify for one.
Maximize your eligibility by:
☐ Adding Base's testnet to your wallet
☐ Dripping Goerli ETH to your wallet with Base's approved faucets
☐ Bridging funds between Base and other testnets using Wormhole
Learn More:
🪂 Don't forget to check out the full guide (compiled in a convenient spreadsheet format), your one-stop-shop for all of your airdrop strategy searching needs!
Your initiation to airdrop hunting starts now 🤝