zkSync Airdrop Farmer Deploys 21,877 Wallets

zkSync Era recently emerged as the top Layer 2 by transaction volume, with many observers attributing its surging activity to opportunistic airdrop hunters seeking to profit from a long-anticipated zkSync token.

While many airdrop hunters tend to use multiple wallets in an attempt to game the system for extra tokens, one entity operating on the network has taken the practice, called a sybil attack, to a new level.

On Sept. 10, Lingland, a community manager at DeFi Land, an NFT game, flagged 21,877 wallets associated with a single entity engaged in peculiar activity on zkSync Era.

On-chain data shows the user distributing GEM, a closed-source token, to accounts funded with small sums of ETH. The user even launched a closed decentralized exchange used to trade tokens between the wallets.

“He created a non-open sourced DEX for himself [to execute] transactions between his wallets indirectly,” Lingland said.

zkSync Era emerged as the top Layer 2 by daily activity in June, currently topping the sector with 11.1 transactions per second (TPS) on average over the past 24 hours, according to L2beat.

Era is even rivaling the Ethereum mainnet by 30-day throughput with 29.6M transactions compared to 30.2M. However, the prevalence of airdrop speculators suggests the data may not be indicative of organic activity on the L2.

zkSync Era is the third-ranked L2 by total value locked with a $399M TVL, down from an early July high of nearly $736M. Era trails longstanding incumbents Arbitrum with $5B and Optimism with $2.4B.