Arbitrum’s ARB token signifies the start of airdrop season — Here are 5 to look out for

Arbitrum developers announced an airdrop of its governance token, ARB, to eligible users and DAOs on the Ethereum Layer-2 platform. An average user received around 625 ARB tokens, which corresponds to around $625 to $1,250, according to pre-launch trading prices and popular estimations.

The prospect of earning free money has instilled excitement around users looking to hunt the next airdrop opportunity. The airdrop farming activity also benefits the protocols by attracting liquidity and usage to the platform. The strategy is working well for both protocol developers and users.

Moreover, the team’s sale of a protocol’s token invokes securities laws, inducing significant legal risk for the developing teams. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that future protocols will use the same strategy to decentralize their protocols.

Here are five potential airdrop opportunities for this year.

zkSync Era

zkSync Era is a Layer-2 rollup on Ethereum based on the zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology. Experts, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have argued that zk-based EVM-compatible rollups could be a game-changer technology with high scalability and throughput, leading to mass adoption.

zkSync has an added advantage of being EMV-compatible, which enables access to the blockchain through MetaMask wallet itself.

Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync raised $200 million in December 2022 in a series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. Leading decentralized applications on Ethereum like Chainlink, Uniswap and Aave has signaled intent to launch on zkSync.

On Feb. 16, 2023, Matter Labs opened the floodgates for registered projects to deploy their code on zkSync mainnet. The public deposits will start shortly. Users looking to maximize their chances of gaining an airdrop will look to improve their on-chain footprint on the mainnet.

Starknet

Starknet is another ZK-based Ethereum rollup that supports decentralized applications. Starkware, the developing firm behind Starknet, has confirmed a STARK token and its utility in decentralizing the Ethereum Layer-2 network.

The team has previously worked on StarkEx, an Ethereum scaling engine used by independent Layer-2 solutions like Sorare, ImmutableX and dYdX. The success of its previous projects instills confidence in the success of Starknet.

Starkware launched the Starknet mainnet in November 2023. The total deposits on Starnet jumped 45% to $2.49 million after the Aribtrum token launch announcement as…