LayerZero - The Rusty Buss, The Sybil Witch Hunt And The "Voluntary" Donation

"LayerZero is an innovative cross-chain interoperability protocol designed to facilitate seamless communication between various blockchain networks. By leveraging advanced technology, LayerZero improves the efficiency and capabilities of decentralized applications (dApps), fostering a more interconnected blockchain ecosystem."

Fancy words and marketing mambo-jumbo that powered hype between airdrop hunters. LayerZero cross-chain interoperability connects various blockchain network, and the token announcement opened the floodgate for repetitive transfers and airdrop FOMO.

Many used LayerZero not for the sake of a more cohesive and interconnected blockchain ecosystem, but to be eligible for the $ZRO airdrop! Their bus is rusty and not as fast as they promote it! There's no war with Across, because will be impossible for LayerZero to compete with the fastest and most secure interoperability protocol!

LayerZero's protocol offered several features for cross-chain transfers, but they will remain in the blockchain history through their "proof of charity"! This wasn't a donation as a donation is voluntary!

The "Proof of Donation" was a mandatory fee of $0.10 for each $ZRO token. The users had to pay the fee to claim their allocation, and fuelled as much frustration as the Sybil which hunt that was started before the eligibility check!

If you have no clue what I am talking, LayerZero encouraged users to report people that farmed on multiple wallets, offering rewards. They hoped that people will self-report, for a reduced allocation instead of no rewards. This was silly move, or just another marketing stunt!

Never farmed $ZRO but was eligible for a small allocation through DeFi exploration. I've made 14 transactions using LayerZero, and interacted with 13 chains. The biggest allocation was obtained from Pancake Swap, where I use my staked $CAKE to vote on gauges on different chains. Maverick, YieldYak and Magpie Protocol rounded up my $ZRO airdrop to 22.82 tokens!

The $ZRO token will be at the core of the LayerZero ecosystem, probably used for network governance, staking rewards, and transaction fees within the LayerZero protocol. Holding $ZRO means you can participate in critical decisions and benefit from the protocol's growth, but I wasn't interested in any of the above aspects.

When LayerZero Foundation released the eligibility checker and announced the claim date, I checked both my main and my alt wallet. Bryan Pellegrino claimed that they had identified a total of 1.28 million wallets eligible for airdrop claims.

Two of those were mine! Surprisingly my alt wallet had an allocation, an airdrop three times bigger than my wallet that had 14 transactions using the Layer Zero technology. How was this possible? Why this wallet with only two transactions got 3x more $ZRO? The answer was ... ZKittyDAO!

Hustled all over the place, but minting my sweet ZKitty NFTs gave me the LayerZero Core tak! Minted a good bunch of furry felines, and this also made me eligible for the $ZRO airdrop. I paid on other layer2s and the NFTs landed on zkSync, thanks to the integrated LayerZero technology.

I let the felines farm $ZKITTY tokens and claimed them after the 90 days vesting period. Best part of the claiming process? It used LayerZero for the claim and the tokens where delivered automatically on Ethereum mainnet. The full allocation of 72.19 $ZRO was obtained by minting ZKitty NFTs and claiming the $ZKITTY airdrop! ZEOW!

Let's forget about the crazy Sybil which hunt and talk about the Proof-of Donation. It is believed that this raised approximately $18.5 million. The amount was donated to Protocol Guild, a collective funding initiative supporting Ethereum developers who have been crucial to LayerZero's growth and the wider Ethereum ecosystem.

To claim ZRO tokens, users had to donate $0.10 per ZRO token, and LayerZero backed the approach as method to aligns eligible recipients with the long-term goals of LayerZero and the future of the crypto ecosystem. Therefore, I had to pay $9.6 worth of crypto to claim my 95.999 $ZRO!

As every airdrop, it broke the blockchain. The "instant" claim took nearly two hours! I paid my "donation" and then waited 120 minutes for the $ZRO to arrive! This wasn't the first time when LayerZero exaggerated about the speed!

The token price was $4.50 upon launch and dropped at $2.60 by the time my airdrop landed in my wallet. The airdrop hunters had two hours to dump the token, while I had to wait for my allocation to be delivered by that rusty old bus! They were still dumping hard, as the price impact was 20% when I checked it on Uniswap.

I had to wait few more hours, and at least this delay was beneficial. The price impact vanished, as the big shares of the airdrop were already dumped in the first minutes of the drop. It was my turn to dump my little bag! My 95.999 $ZRO turned into ZERO ZRO!

Sold them for USDC, used later for calculated investments. I am not a hypocrite, and I appreciated the gift! However, I don't see much potential for $ZRO on the long term. Maybe the conflictual attitude of Bryan made me allergic to LayerZero bullshit? All that matters is that my crypto portfolio got bigger with 339 USDC from an unexpected airdrop!

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