DeFi
Lens Protocol was promised millions to build on ZKsync
- Lens Protocol looked for new protocols to build on earlier this year, a source said.
- Negotiators offered tens of millions of dollars to compete with an offer to Lens to rely on ZKsync.
- Lens announced in May that it had chosen ZKsync.
Lens Protocol, the decentralized social media protocol launched by Aave founder Stani Kulechov, is expected to be one of the biggest winners from ZKsync’s token launch.
Representatives of ZKsync, a zero-knowledge protocol, have promised Lens a substantial tranche of tokens to build on the protocol, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The exact number of tokens is unclear, but those that competed with ZKsync to attract Lens to their blockchains withdrew from the bidding war once Lens representatives said they were offered approximately 0.5% of the total supply of the recently launched. ZK token.
Currently ZK token price of about $0.21, that would translate to $22.4 million.
Spokespeople for Matter Labs, the lead developer behind ZKsync, and Avara, the umbrella company that oversees Lens, declined to comment.
Kuleshov in May announcement a plan to create a new version of Lens on ZKsync.
On Monday, Matter Labs, the lead developer behind ZKsync, airdropped 3.6 billion tokens across approximately 700,000 wallets.
As part of this distribution of 3.6 billion tokens, Aave, the lending protocol founded by Kulechov, received around 8.3 million tokens, and Lens received around 5.6 million, according to a Github repository linked from a primary ZKsync account.
Join the community to receive our latest stories and updates
This initial allocation amounts to approximately $3 million, at current prices.
“There are many ZK native and non-native projects that have some sort of allocation,” said Stani Kulechov, founder and CEO of Avara. DL News.
Kulechov said he wasn’t sure of Lens’ exact breakdown.
“It is up to the Lens community to decide what to do with these [tokens] based on the LIP process, our proposals for improving goals that anyone can create.
Protocol bidding wars
The agreement between representatives of ZKsync and Lens is part of a broader bidding process between blockchain ecosystems to attract projects to develop on their networks.
Polygon Labs paid Starbucks to experiment with NFTs at the end of the latest crypto bull run in 2022, according to CoinDesk.
Other blockchain networks, like Starware Or Mantisoften offer the equivalent of millions of dollars in grants available for projects to build on their protocols.
Although deals to incentivize a company to build on a new blockchain are not common knowledge, they are common.
“It’s the nature of the industry,” said the source close to the Lens matter.
Ben Weiss is a Dubai correspondent at DL News. Do you have any advice? Send him an email to bweiss@dlnews.com.