Hey folks, It’s been quite some time since the cryptospace has seen a significant airdrop. One could argue Celestia’s $TIA airdrop was pretty significant (if you were lucky to be outside of certain jurisdictions like the U.S.), but I’m contesting that the last major one we’ve seen was Arbitrum’s $ARB, and that one’s been some time as it’s now been several months ago last March 2023. As we’re headed (hopefully) into the start of the next bull cycle, I’m expecting that we’re going to see a lot more VC-funding and a lot more projects that are vying for whatever piece they can of the cryptospace. As we’ve seen with several projects in the past — one of the easiest ways to go about gaining mass adoption is through airdrops.
I’ve been written about LayerZero several times in the past, but there’s been a lot of speculation lately that a Layer Zero ($ZRO) airdrop could be coming soon, and that it could be just as big (if not bigger) than anything we’ve seen since. In today’s article I’m going to be going over why there’s been so much hype surrounding a potential airdrop, what events have occurred recently which indicate that it might be coming soon, and lastly for you last-minute degens, some relatively cheap and strategies that might be help you become eligible (assuming that a snapshot hasn’t been taken already).
First, what is LayerZero?
In a world where bridges are notoriously rife with exploits, besides higher security, LayerZero boasts that they are able to have Instant Guaranteed Finality (IGF) and extremely fast transactions. IGF occurs through different LayerZero endpoints, where different chains/networks can talk directly to one another securely through off-chain relayers and on-chain oracles:
Earlier this year LayerZero even announced the largest bug bounty program ever of $15 million dollars $15 million dollars per vulnerability. To put things in perspective, Google offers a bug bounties ranging from $100 to $31,337 dollars and programs like Chat GPT offers bounties ranging from $200 to $20,000 dollars.
Why is there so much hype surrounding LayerZero?
LayerZero has a generated the most amount of hype this year mainly due to its evaluation. Earlier this year in March, LayerZero finished its Series B raise in funding, attracting $120 million dollars making the company effectively worth around $3 billion dollars. The list of investors is long, but includes all the usual biggest players including: Binance, Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, COINBASE Ventures, Delphi Digital, a16z and so on.
What sets LayerZero apart from other multi-billion dollar projects is that it doesn’t really have a flagship standalone product of their own. In other words, LayerZero’s tech stack is integrated into many different projects yet they don’t really have a bridge of their own, which is incidentally the reason why there are many potential routes one could go in order to seek eligibility for an upcoming airdrop.
What Platforms Are Using LayerZero?
There are a ton of different platforms that have now integrated LayerZero tech, and I’d provide a detailed list is extremely extensive, including wallets, gaming, launchpads, NFT projects, etc. LayerZero.news currently lists 70+ projects and the list isn’t comprehensive —this doesn’t include the newest integrations like the one with Near protocol that was announced at Nearcon last week
Why is there speculation that there’s an airdrop coming?
So first of all, there’s been speculation that an airdrop has been coming since really last spring, but up until late, there’s been a few different incidences that have cause more eyebrows to get raised.
SSL Certificates: Last week the LayerZero foundation got SSL certificates for their domains layzerzero.foundation and layerzero.network on October 24th, which many are speculating (as in the case of Arbitrum’s airdrop) that it signals preparation for a “big announcement” that’s coming soon.
This by no means is a smoking gun because, the “big announcement” could just be that LayerZero is doing some big like integrating with Near protocol — anything to prepare for lots of traffic coming in. However as we move down the list, this may be one of the biggest indicators, especially since one of the SSL’s was for “layerzero.foundation.”
TapiocaDAO announcing that $ZRO is required for its imminent genesis launch: Although this was later debunked through one of TapiocaDAO’s taptalks, there was initially speculation that Tapioca’s Genesis launch required $ZRO for its gas fees, a date which is currently set for December 12th. This is categorically false, but nevertheless, this still stoked the rumor mill that we should be expecting an airdrop soon.
OKX’s false start: There was a deleted supposed OKX x LayerZero-themed video posted which was shortly deleted:
This was probably a nothing-burger as well — LayerZero and OKX both use sterile black and white graphics for a lot of their marketing media. Big whoop.
Polymarket odds show increasing favor towards airdrop: Polymarket, DeFi’s favorite world-event gambling site, has shown increasing odds for an airdrop to happen at the end of the year:
As you can tell of the history of the odds, this to me seems like some hot air considering the odds have been flipping back and forth several times over the past week.
Quick and easy Airdrop Strategy
At this stage in the game and because the number of LayerZero integrations are so extensive and varied, it’s probably safe to say that the airdrop is actually going to be centered on the utilization of the tech itself, not whether or not you simply hold some $PENDL or $RDNT.
Whether or not you truly think we’re in for an $ZRO airdrop by the end of this year, there still might be time to become eligible with some on-chain activity. Nothing beats organic actions, and you may have already written your chances off of getting enough transactions in, but here’s a list of the most profitable and easy ways I’ve found to utilize LayerZero tech, even if you’re not a whale:
1. Transfer $ALTD to different bridges without any fees.AltitudeDefi ($ALTD) you can transfer their native tokens across chains without fees. This transaction on AltitudeDefi would only cost you $0.40 cents worth of $ETH to bridge over:
Plus as an added bonus, as
highlights, holding onto $STG holder might make you eligible for an $ALTD airdrop! Speaking of $STG.
Transfer $STG to different bridges without any fees. Similar to Altitude, on Stargate Finace you can also bridge their native token $STG without any fees as well:
And if you’re already holding $STG, as one of LayerZero’s flagship projects, it might make sense to you to get involved in governance and vote on their latest proposal
3. Bridge between networks that have low fees (i.e., Arbitrum, Optimism, Optimism, Polygon, Mantle, BSC). Part of the beauty of LayerZero is that it gives you cheap and highly secured transactions, so the main variable to consider if you’re wanting to do a ton of transactions in a short period of time are protocol fees and gas fees, here are some the different LayerZero bridges protocols that have flat fees in basis points (the lower the bps, the lower the fee):
AltitudeDefi — 5
Stargate.Finance — 6
PancakeSwap — 25
SushiSwap — 30
There are of course many other bridges out there that are using LayerZero tech, but the fees can be dynamic and can vary greatly.
4. Get your free LayerZero Supporter 2023 NFT:
I’m pretty certain this is most likely not going to be a qualifier, but it’s a free NFT and literally only takes seconds to complete. The NFTs are sponsored by LayerZero.Corner, one of the foremost community-led places to get all LayerZero news in addition to a layout of all the projects that are using LayerZero tech.
Besides $ZRO, there are so many more different potential airdrop opportunities out there on the horizon (i.e. Taho, Scroll, zkEVM, $POL, etc.), and I imagine that in the weeks and months to come, as more money comes into crypto we’re going to see a lot more be unleashed or at least get incentivized in order to attract more liquidity to their respective spaces.
Is $ZRO going to be airdropped on us by the end of the year? I have no clue. While others are speculating however, I’m going to keep grinding to see what else is out there.
And as always, thanks for taking the time to read this and be sure to follow me on twitter (https://twitter.com/CryptosWith) to get all my latest updates. If you want to get access to all my draft links or get an idea about what’s next on my docket before I publish, find me on Friend.tech, where I share all that information in my chatroom. Also, looking for a gift for your Crypto-loving/hating friend? Give them a REKT journal to cheer them up!
Disclaimer: And as a final reminder, this is not financial advice and this is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please as always, do your own research and find what investments are best for you. Cheers everyone!
