Major Exchanges Prepare for LayerZero’s ZRO Listing

The LayerZero Foundation will distribute a total of 85 million ZRO tokens from the LayerZero omnichain project starting at 14:00 (Kyiv/Moscow).

On June 19, co-founder and CEO Bryan Pellegrino announced that 1.28 million wallets are eligible for the airdrop. Over 6 million unique addresses have interacted with the protocol.

In the final model, early transactions are rewarded with three times more tokens. Those who interacted with LayerZero after the snapshot will receive an additional 10 ZRO per operation. For costless transfers, the distribution volume is reduced by 80%.

“The launch of ZRO […] will transform it into immutable infrastructure at the community’s disposal,” the statement reads.

The platform’s native token supply is 1 billion, 38.3% of which will be distributed among users, developers, and community members.

On June 20, the first day of the airdrop, selected participants will be able to claim 8.5% of the total 1 billion supply, or 85 million ZRO.

The remaining community tokens will be reserved for future distribution programs and ecosystem development.

Pellegrino provided additional details:

For clarity since there seems to be a lot of confusion, of the 25% day 1 unlocked, 20% is directly going to users/protocols — direct.

8.5% now on claim
0.5% for community (forward looking)
11% for upcoming STIP + more retroactive distributions
5% for foundation for ecosystem,… https://t.co/lBC4Wq0pEj

— Bryan Pellegrino (臭企鹅) (@PrimordialAA) June 20, 2024

Of the 25% of tokens unlocked on the first day, 20% go directly to users/protocols.

Distribution structure:

• 8.5% — on claim;
• 0.5% — for the community (forward looking);
• 11% — for upcoming STIP + more retroactive distributions;
• 5% — for the foundation for ecosystem development, growth, grants, and liquidity provision.

Of the 20% intended for the community, no tokens will ever be moved unless specifically designated for purposes. These will be announced in advance. Tokens in this case will be distributed either through a forward-looking RFP protocol (STIP) or retroactively (as in this TGE).

Tokenomics

Overall, the tokenomics are as follows:

• 38.3% — to the LayerZero community, namely users, developers, and community members;
• 32.2% — to strategic partners — investors and advisors — with a three-year vesting period;
• 25.5% — to current and future team members, also with a three-year lock-up period;
• 4.0% — repurchased tokens allocated to the community.

The LayerZero Foundation acknowledged the complexity of a “proper” airdrop. The organization noted that LayerZero is one of the most used projects among users and “farmers” of all time.

“While the distribution is not perfect, we consider it fair. Rewarding long-term users is done to maximize protocol engagement in the future,” the statement reads.

The organization noted that the eligibility criteria for participation in the distribution were determined based on three main factors:

• sybil filtering;
• request for proposals;
• eligibility criteria.

LayerZero will distribute 3% of the total token supply among 211 approved RFPs.

After this, each user who made a transaction before the snapshot is entitled to receive between 25 ZRO and 5000 ZRO, weighted by the amount of fees paid.

“All unclaimed tokens at the end of the claim period will be redistributed among the team,” Pellegrino explained.

Fee Control

ZRO holders will always control fee accrual in the protocol.

An immutable contract with voting rights conducts a public on-chain referendum every six months, allowing token holders to vote on activating or deactivating the fee switch.

LayerZero may charge a fee equal to the aggregate cost of verifying and executing a cross-chain message. For example, if the application’s chosen configuration of DVN and executors charges $0.01 per transaction between Arbitrum and Optimism, LayerZero may also charge a fee of $0.01.

If the switch is activated through governance, the treasury contract accumulates the fee on the local chain and burns it. This mechanism, similar to EIP-1559, effectively distributes fees among ZRO holders.

Listing

Several major exchanges, including Binance, have announced the addition of ZRO to their list of tradable assets.

Binance will list LayerZero (ZRO) with seed tag. https://t.co/MxA9zlOD1V

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 20, 2024

The pre-market platform Whales Pro shows an indicative ZRO price of $4.38 at the time of writing. At its peak, the price exceeded $6.

In April 2023, LayerZero Labs raised $120 million in a Series B funding round, valuing the company at $3 billion.

In December, the project team announced an airdrop without disclosing any details. CoinGecko experts included the LayerZero token distribution among the most anticipated in 2024.