After years of being PUA'd, Zora finally issued its token, but the community users who have waited a long time did not get the 'big results' they hoped for; upon opening their wallets, they found rewards that couldn't even cover the gas fees, let alone the tokens themselves being of no use. In an instant, the community's emotions were completely 'defensive', and the on-chain reputation protocol Ethos unexpectedly became an outlet for users to express their dissatisfaction. The 'flop scene' of Zora has also been permanently recorded on-chain, becoming a mark of trust collapse.
The airdrop 'slapped' early users in the face, and the token distribution has been criticized for betraying the community.
Last month, after Zora announced the upcoming launch of its native token ZORA, the community's long-standing expectations reached a peak. On the eve of the token issuance, the Base official even posted several tweets to hype Zora, successfully drawing attention, and various memes flooded the internet, with multiple data points soaring.
However, this airdrop ultimately turned into a disappointing 'century flop'. On April 23, Zora opened the airdrop claims and stated that this airdrop would distribute 1 billion ZORA tokens to 2,415,024 addresses. Most of the airdrop tokens were allocated based on the first snapshot (from January 1, 2020, 8:00 to March 3, 2025, 22:00), while the airdrop from the second snapshot accounted for a smaller proportion (from March 3, 2025, 22:00 to April 20, 2025, 8:00), and covered the Coins activities on Zora's latest protocol. The specific allocation numbers were calculated based on user activity on Zora and their overall participation in the current protocol and its previous versions, including but not limited to minting, trading, and referrals.
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Meanwhile, the ZORA token landed on Binance Alpha, and eligible users will receive 4,276 ZORA airdrops. However, the results of this airdrop have left many long-term participants in the Zora ecosystem feeling angry, as they only received a small amount of tokens, not even enough to cover gas fees.
Recently, speculators and Binance Alpha users easily took a large amount of tokens. This severely unbalanced distribution method not only caused widespread anger in the community but was also seen as a betrayal of early supporters. What made the community even more dissatisfied was that the Zora airdrop snapshots were divided into two parts, but the specific allocation criteria were never made public, and the entire process lacked the necessary transparency.
Moreover, Zora has faced strong criticism from the community due to its highly concentrated and opaque distribution ratio. According to the token economic model disclosed by ZORA, community airdrops account for only 10%, while the team, treasury, and strategic contributors receive as much as 65%, and only require a 6-month lockup period before unlocking can begin; the specific unlocking pace has also not been detailed.
In addition, Zora officials stated that the ZORA token is merely a 'just for fun' MEME coin, without any technical or governance functions, primarily used for community rewards and ecological incentives. This positioning has triggered a series of questions from the community: since the tokens lack substantial use, why does the team still need to occupy such a high proportion? Why should the community believe that ZORA has long-term value?
Amidst multiple layers of disappointment, Ethos' negative review function is seen as a channel for emotional expression, leading community users to leave 'bad reviews', which caused Zora's credibility evaluation scores to plummet. Many users expressed, 'On-chain records are immutable; malicious projects must be recorded in history.'
With more than half of the airdrop progress, the user claim rate is less than 20%, and the average gain is only $37.
From a price performance perspective, Binance data shows that after ZORA's launch, it briefly surged to $0.0466, and the next day it dropped to a low of $0.0172, with a maximum decline of nearly 63%, causing the market enthusiasm to cool rapidly.
Dune data shows that as of the time of writing, over 514 million tokens have already been successfully claimed by users in the ZORA airdrop. Among them, the top 50 addresses claimed over 190 million tokens, averaging about 3.931 million tokens per address, which is valued at approximately $92,000 at the current price (about $0.0235), accounting for 36.9% of the total claimed amount. This indicates a clear dominance of top addresses in the airdrop allocation.
Meanwhile, in terms of the number of participating users, over 320,000 users have participated in the claim, but the average claim is only 1,571.1 ZORA tokens, equivalent to about $37. This strong contrast highlights the extreme imbalance in the distribution structure—large holders reap massive airdrops, while ordinary users receive very limited allocations.
From the claim progress, about 51.42% of the total token supply has been claimed, but only 13.35% of eligible users have actually completed the claim. This further illustrates that the proportion of users actively claiming is very low, with most users opting to forgo the claim.
User participation has significantly declined, and the shift to on-chain social activities has caused controversy.
Founded in 2020, Zora was initially positioned as an NFT marketplace protocol. Public data shows that the project has raised at least $52 million in funding, with investors including Coinbase Ventures, Paradigm, Haun Ventures, and others, with the last round of financing valuing it at a staggering $600 million. However, as the NFT market cooled and competition intensified, Zora gradually evolved into a focus on on-chain social and creator economy ecosystems, including the launch of the 'Coins' feature, which automatically mints each piece of social content (such as images, videos, texts) into ERC-20 tokens, and the launch of its own Layer 2 network, Zora Network.
Despite continuously exploring new narrative directions, Zora's overall ecological activity has significantly declined. According to Dune data, as of April 24, the total number of smart contracts created on the Zora network has exceeded 3.51 million, but in terms of daily contract creation, the number has dropped from an early peak of 144,000 to about 13,000, which is less than one-tenth of the peak; similarly, the cumulative transaction volume on the Zora network has surpassed 87.4 million, yet the daily transaction volume has decreased from a historical high of 3.338 million to about 428,000; although the total number of active addresses has reached 470,000, compared to about 259,000 daily active users at last year's peak, it is now only 50,900, showing a decline in user participation.
In terms of revenue, DeFiLlama and Dune data show that Zora's cumulative revenue is only $5.4 million, and Zora Network's profit is merely 527.74 ETH. The community believes that this falls far short of the market expectations corresponding to its $600 million valuation.
Additionally, despite Zora claiming to bring creators tens of millions of dollars in revenue, its on-chain experimental and tokenization narrative has still sparked controversy. For instance, recently, Base protocol head Jesse Pollak praised Zora Coins for having a record number of active users, but ZachXBT criticized these tokens as 'viruses', with a market cap of less than $5 million. In response, Jesse acknowledged that most content is virtually worthless, while a few pieces hold significant value, but ZachXBT questioned why creators would issue a large number of tokens that dilute their brand. Jesse countered that on-chain creation does not dilute the brand; good content will spread naturally, with market and algorithms determining its value.
Overall, Zora attempts to reshape itself with on-chain social and tokenization narratives, but the inflated valuation and the increasingly cooling ecological activity have already buried the hidden dangers of a trust crisis, and this insincere airdrop may become the last straw that breaks the community's confidence.
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