From Institutional Feast to Community Ownership: The Billion Journey of ZKFair

Hong Kong, 19th April 2024, ZEX PR WIRE, As the Cancun upgrade approaches, the call for the L2 Summer time is increasing. However, it is necessary to distinguish whether this is a feast for VCs, institutions, and whales; or an opportunity for the community, retail investors, and decentralization in general.

ZKFair has decided to be the L2 of the people, with all participation rights belonging to the community.

ZKFair is an EVM L2 ecosystem built by Lumoz, a  Rollup as a Service (RaaS) provider. This L2 is a pioneer of its kind as the first Polygon CDK ZkRollup to be on Mainnet. Furthermore, Lumoz has implemented another successful chain which has been positioned as the top BTC L2 project by TVL amount (over US$3.8 Billion at the time of writing), Merlin Chain. The consistent focus on the creation of these new L2 ecosystems lies in returning L2 revenue to users in order to truly promote the popularization of rollups technology.

ZKFair Launches with an IGO model

ZKFair is determined to learn from Bitcoin’s economic model, where transaction fees go 100% to miners. In contrast, Ethereum’s L2 Rollups “skim” part of the fees paid by users, turning them into their profit source. This revenue sharing system is not fair.

In this regard, ZKFair was born to change this unfair revenue model. Since the real creators of the L2 Summer are the users, they should be taking all the profits. To reflect this narrative, ZKF tokens will be 100% airdropped to users. Furthermore, as a “channel” fee for gas fee, ZKF will also be 100% returned to users.

Recently, the market has responded positively, with ZKF surging 40% in one day and related PFPs skyrocketing by 180 times.

70 days after its birth, ZKFair sets off from the community

Fairness becomes the industry spirit again, and the free and open crypto world returns.On Christmas Eve 2023, Lumoz decided to launch ZKFair in a Fair Launch mode, creating a unique IGO (Initial Gas Offering) paradigm. The core idea is that “participants receive token airdrops in proportion to the gas they burn through their chain transactions; the issuer then takes the gas paid by participants as the income for this token issuance.”

Double 100% Rebate, Leaving No Margin.

Users obtain ZKF tokens through gas fees as a proof of work mechanism, which is different from the traditional “get it for nothing” approach, emphasizing fairness for everyone to participate.

ZKFair sets its total issuance at 10 billion tokens, initially using USDC as gas fee for airdrops and additional community rewards through mainnet interactions and transactions. 

Specifically, airdrops are divided into gas fee airdrops and community member distributions. To lower initial participation barriers, ZKFair allows using USDC as the initial stage’s gas fee for broader participation. After mainnet launch, gas fees are returned to users.

In repetition, the project redistributes received gas fees in USDC to give back to users, adhering so to a 100% fair launch principle without retaining or taking any form of tokens from the project side.

To show support for the Bitcoin community, ZKF also distributed 5% of its tokens to members of the Ordinal inscription community. Additionally, 25% of ZKF tokens are airdropped to community members based on their contributions.

ZKF is also used to incentivize staking. 75% of ZKFair’s transaction fees serve as staking rewards, ensuring users receive proportional returns for contributing to the ZKFair network.

From a fair launch, ZKFair grows robustly in the name of the community, considering community interests at every step and ultimately unleashing unparalleled upward growth power.

Growing With The Community

Unlike typical L2 communities, ZKFair’s project team is the community itself. Adhering to 100% community ownership,  and within 70 days of its launch,  ZKFair has launched multiple launchpads, including leading wallets like Bitget Wallet, and has received trading support from mainstream exchanges like Gate.io.

Furthermore, ZKFair has surpassed its initial growth phase. Not only launching other launchpads, but also serving as a project launch platform itself. Currently, five projects have entered the ZKFair Launchpool, with Merlin Chain being the most notable. By continuously launching high-quality projects will provide ongoing support for ZKF tokens.

From Community Growth To Community Leadership

ZKFair does have a development and support team, which is also part of the community. Driven by the community, ZKFair’s TVL has reached $300 million, making it the highest among L2s developed using Polygon CDK and ranking in the top ten on L2BEAT.

The rapid growth in TVL and token price is backed by ZKFair’s continuous BD efforts. ZKFair regularly adds new partners every few days, including security cooperation with Go+ Plus and domain issuance with Space ID. As of now, ZKFair has at least 150 various ecosystem projects.

According to ZKFair’s previously announced roadmap, Q1 2024 aims to establish contact with 200 project parties and achieve cooperation with over 100+. The initial targets seem to be met.

Moreover, on March 8th, ZKFair will co-host a large-scale ecological event with Lumoz, with the first round already attracting 25 project sponsors, totaling 30 million Lumoz points and 50,000 USDC for the prize pool. These points can be exchanged for Lumoz tokens in the future.

It is worth mentioning that Lumoz is conducting a new round of financing with a valuation of US$120 million, with the  investment amount already at its limit. The points given to ZKFair users are sufficient to prove Lumoz’s support for ZKF. Based on the current market value alone, it has exceeded US$1 million.

After 70 days of hard work, ZKFair now boasts over 200,000 community members. However, this is just the beginning. The future goal is to reach 1 million community members, at least US$1 billion in TVL, and break through the $10 billion market cap barrier for ZKF, creating a blockbuster L2 for everyone.

According to ZKFair’s Q2 roadmap, there will be stronger collaboration with the BTC ecosystem. This will showcase the powerful alliance between ZKF and BTC.

The BTC ecosystem is definitely the focus of this year, and the spirit of fairness is the most valued concept in the Bitcoin community. Just like ZKF airdropping to the Inscription community, ZKFair’s entry into the BTC ecosystem will also aid in capturing ZKF’s value.

Q2 2024: 

• New cooperation with Lumoz RaaS’s fresh ETH L2s to further empower ZKFair and $ZKF.

• Support cross-chain transfers and transactions of BTC ecosystem assets.

• Actively build the ecosystem, completing over 150 ecosystem projects, with a focus on DeFi, Game, and AI sectors.

• Continue to launch on more centralized exchanges.

• Sustain cooperation with Polygon Labs, optimizing ZKP generation and enhancing on-chain interaction experience.

Achieving these goals will require a globalized approach. Following the ecosystem groundwork in February, key markets for expansion in Q2 2024 will include the United States, Hong Kong, Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Singapore, UAE, and China.

Community Ownership and ZK Technology

ZKFair belongs to the community, not merely as a marketing slogan, but out of confidence and composure derived from ZK technology. It’s precisely because of the maturity of ZK-Rollup technology that Lumoz and the ZKFair development team believe that the community’s self-sufficiency is enough to sustain it, thus focusing on market expansion.

Technology And The Market Complement Each Other

Compared to OP series rollup technology solutions, ZK series rollups are more often seen as Ethereum’s medium to long-term scalability solution. However, current L2s face numerous challenges, such as cross-chain interoperability or being confined to specific domains, such as Loopring being regarded as a payment channel, etc.

ZKFair, true to its name, is a project launched fairly under ZK technology, owned by the community. ZKFair, powered by Lumoz, utilizes Polygon CDK technology and Celestia DA. Lumoz, as an officially recognized CDK service provider by Polygon, has significant technological research and development capabilities.

For instance, ZKFair uses a native cross-Rollup communication protocol (NCRC), enabling atomic-level information exchange between multiple rollups. Users can directly invoke Ethereum dApps on ZKFair without needing to transfer assets across chains.

Furthermore, ZKFair can communicate with other L2 Rollups, possessing cross-contract calling capabilities, thereby reconnecting the fragmented Ethereum L2 ecosystem.

Choosing Celestia as the DA layer is also an economically driven decision. As a DA layer, Celestia will save more than a hundred times in gas fees compared to EigenDA or Ethereum itself, aligning more closely with community interests.

Underneath its market strategy lies ZKFair’s robust technological reserves. Only with such a foundation can ZKFair dare to hand over complete operational control to its users in the future, transitioning to community ownership.

As mentioned earlier, ZKFair’s community governance model initiates with a 100% token airdrop at mainnet launch, aiming to create a fair, just, and highly autonomous community environment, thus effectively addressing the unfair issues prevalent in existing ZK-Rollup projects.

Pure technology must also be combined with effective token incentives; ZKF will undertake the heavy lifting of community governance.

Regarding community self-drive, ZKF’s functionality mainly focuses on staking and voting. Currently, ZKFair has launched its staking feature, allowing users to earn gas fee profit dividends by staking ZKF. In terms of specific allocation, 75% of the transaction fee profits are used to incentivize ZKF stakers, with the remaining 25% allocated to developers to encourage them to develop native apps on ZKFair.

Currently, about 3.5 billion ZKF tokens have entered the staking system, distributing 630,000 USDC with a stable annual yield of around 15%. Out of these, 1 billion tokens are locked in Merlin Chain, strongly supporting ZKF’s price and market value.

Another aspect supporting ZKF’s value is the FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) data. With ZKF being fully circulated, its FDV represents its actual market value – a genuine reflection of value without discounting for locked circulations.

The correlation between ZKF’s FDV and TVL is also quite realistic. The larger the difference between TVL and FDV, the more tokens are not fulfilling their real potential. Additionally, the FDV/TVL ratio can indicate the extent of a token’s overvaluation. With ZKF’s ratio around 0.64 compared to StarkNet’s 1.45, ZKF’s FDV is not high, indicating potential for future growth.

Empowerment is Endless; Creating The Premier On-Chain Launchpad

ZKFair is controlled by the community, but mere community control cannot guarantee long-term project sustainability and governance quality. Thus, defining the community’s tone is crucial.

For example, Launchpool has chosen to establish a long-term partnership with Merlin Chain and has already reached the fifth round. Merlin Chain is not just simply raising funds from the ZKFair community, but will return some of the profits, forming a stronger binding relationship. Participating in the ZKFair Launchpool can earn 1% of Merlin tokens, which not only indirectly supports the development of Merlin Chain, but also serves as a demonstration for other project parties.

Not only that, Merlin also represents the project discovery capability of the ZKFair team. Since 2024, ZKFair has been actively expanding in various tracks such as NFT, DeFi, infrastructure, gaming, and AI.

On February 6, 2024, ZKFair collaborated with Element to launch the ZKFair Pass, limited to 20,000 pieces and sold out within 10 minutes. This was not just an NFT release but also included airdrop rights for all projects in the ZKFair Launchpool during February 2024.

Continuing its momentum, ZKFair also launched the richer-benefit ZKfair PFP NFT; users holding PFP can participate in the ZKFair Launchpool at lower costs for more points.

On March 2nd, the CyberArmy NFT series, based on the ERC-404 protocol, began selling on Element. With a total of 9999 pieces, they sold out in less than an hour, surging up to 150 times in value.

Summary

ZKFair began with the community and will return to the community.

Everything created by ZKFair stems from the goal of empowering users. Current blockchain technology has developed excessively, with users’ presence and value being obscured in many foundational products.

ZKFair decides to rediscover them. With over 600,000 users on the chain, ZKFair has never abandoned its dream, persistently aiming for a market value of 10 billion. This is not an illusion but a proven path validated by Arbitrum, especially when ZK series Rollups are at a disadvantage in terms of TVL. Remaking ZK’s glory is an unshirkable duty for ZKFair.