DeFi
Zeta Markets Launches ZEX Airdrop
Early adopters can now claim 8% of the token supply, with 30% reserved for ongoing trading incentives.
Zeta Markets, a decentralized perpetual exchange based on Solana, is the latest Web3 project to launch a token to early adopters.
June 27, Zeta open airdrop claims its ZEX token. ZEX facilitates project governance and staking and will also serve as the native gas token for Zeta’s upcoming Layer 2 network, Zeta X.
“ZEX is the native token of Zeta Markets, which powers governance, staking and incentives on the protocol,” Zeta said. “Additionally, ZEX will serve as both the native gas token and incentive mechanism on Zeta X, Zeta’s pioneering DeFi L2 on Solana.”
Zeta is currently the 25th largest DeFi protocol on Solana with a total value locked of $17.2 million, according to DeFi Llama. The platform generated $45 million in 24-hour volume and processed 10 billion dollars in cumulative volume since its launch in 2021, and hosts 125,000 monthly active users.
For comparison, dYdX v4, a leading DeFi derivatives exchange, hosted $542 million in transactions in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
Zeta has allocated 10% of ZEX’s supply to the airdrop. Active Zeta traders can now claim 70% of the drawdown, with allocations determined by an internal snapshot taken on June 7.
Zeta ecosystem partners will receive 1% of ZEX’s supply, while the remaining tokens will be sent to ZEX investors as a follow-on. drop this will take place after 28 days. Airdrop claims will remain open until September 25, 2024.
“The initial airdrop is designed to reward genuine, long-term Zeta users,” the project states.
Zeta added that 30% of ZEX’s total supply is intended to provide ongoing trading incentives, with rewards distributed to users over 90 epochs lasting 28 days each.
Vote Deposit Tokenomics
Zeta claims that its token is among the first to introduce a “vote-escrow” (VE) mechanism in the Solana ecosystem.
VE actors receive governance power proportional to the sum of assets staked and the length of time tokens are locked, allowing actors to vote on which asset pools rewards are allocated. This mechanism gave rise to the “Curve Wars» in 2021, where DeFi protocols competed to allocate CRV to Curve liquidity pools.
Zeta described VE-tokenomics as “an incentive for long-term engagement with exponentially greater governance and enhanced incentives for stakers.”
Zeta X joins Solana’s L2 ecosystem
The drop follows Zeta announcing plans to launch a Solana-based layer 2 application chain, Zeta X (ZX) on May 23.
Zeta X will feature a Solana-based system optimistic accumulation who uses zero-knowledge proofs to facilitate permissionless on-chain settlement. The platform will match orders on Layer 2 while utilizing Solana’s base layer for data availability and settlement, aiming to deliver on-chain performance comparable to centralized platforms.
The project claims that Zeta X will facilitate throughput of up to 10,000 transactions per second and transaction confirmation in less than 10 milliseconds. Zeta X will also support up to 50x leverage.
“By taking the inherent strengths of Solana Layer 1 and leveraging the power of a purpose-built L2, ZX will provide traders with an unmatched experience in terms of speed, efficiency and security,” said Tristan Frizza, founder of Zeta Markets.
Frizza told The Defiant that while the project is currently focused on building ZX to support a revamped Zeta exchange, it will invite third-party developers to build “synergistic applications” on the network in the future.
“Our current plans are to focus on a single exchange application to prioritize liquidity and user experience,” Frizza said. “That being said, we will certainly explore ways for people to compound on top of this liquidity layer and create synergies across applications on our L2, for example, money markets, core trading vaults, etc.
Zeta
Zeta’s Layer 2 ambitions come as the Solana ecosystem appears to be tentatively moving toward L2 adoption, despite the Solana team. commit to achieve high-throughput scalability at its base layer.
On June 21, Light Protocol and Helius Labs sparked controversy with the testnet deployment of ZK Compressiona Solana-based scaling solution that appears to borrow much of its architecture from Ethereum Layer 2.
“It’s like an L2 without all the things people complain about about L2s” said Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, in the middle of a heated debate on social networks. “It’s an L2 that doesn’t need a multisig security council, users don’t need to change channel ID, don’t need a governance token, don’t need no need for an external sequencer, Solana validators still receive all transaction fees.”