Zora Airdrop Incoming, How Has the 6-Year Ecosystem Maturity Been?

After 6 years of accumulation, Zora, an art social ecosystem project created by former Coinbase employees, finally announced on March 3 that it will launch the "community" Memecoin—$ZORA on its official X this spring. What is Zora's current ecosystem like, and how can one receive the airdrop?

$ZORA Tokenomics

The team announced that $ZORA is set to launch on Base, with a total token supply of 10 billion, of which 10% will be used for an airdrop.

Three parts will not be subject to unlocking restrictions, namely 20% for incentivizing Zora ecosystem projects, 10% for user participation in the ecosystem airdrop, and 5% allocated to CEXs and liquidity providers. The locked portions—"Company Treasury," "Team Allocations," and "Strategic Contributors"—make up 65% and will begin unlocking 6 months after the TGE.

The team also explicitly stated that $ZORA is not a governance token but a Memecoin, granting no governance rights to its holders or any equity in Zora or its products. Perhaps due to this, the unlocking rate was not elaborated in detail but rather presented in a table. Given the recent market volatility, secondary participants are advised to exercise caution.

In the announcement, the team revealed that the first snapshot was taken today at "9:00 AM EST on March 3, 2025," and the second snapshot will be taken 3 days before the $ZORA launch this spring $ZORA. This means that both users who have interacted in the past but have been inactive for a long time and new users who have never interacted will have the opportunity to participate.

Zora's Recent Development

From the 2019 digital fashion concept Saint Fame, Zora has evolved into a full-fledged product. It quickly found its brand positioning by identifying the "problem" it discovered, which is resolving the cognitive model of ownership in Web2 internet and content creation. It introduced its innovative "vision" of "making creations on the internet free and valuable." This viewpoint has been integral to the ecosystem from the beginning till now. In the days leading up to the airdrop announcement, Zora's co-founders reiterated the "Free and Valuable" perspective in a blog post. Irrespective of market shifts, all they need to do is deliver content that aligns with their vision.

This is also why Zora, as a project in the art ecosystem, even though it has not always been at the forefront of the market, has been able to integrate with various narratives and leave an impression between so many bull and bear cycles. The early MetaVerse narrative introduced a virtual fashion brand and a token $TAPE that could be redeemed for music tapes. The chain NFT trading protocol launched in 2022 provided a composable, immutable, universally accessible, and censorship-resistant secondary market, winning the hearts of artists and creators, capturing a market share in the niche market that OpenSea was hesitant to enter. In 2023, Open Editions were optimized (providing creators with more convenient tools to monetize their imagination, with Jack Butcher's Checks and Opens being the best examples, which is actually the precursor of the current Zora product).

In 2024, Zora released its social app and deeply engaged in the then-booming social ecosystem Farcaster, where many Layer3 concept products emerged. The first permissionless collector's token - $IMAGINE and the first Meme coin - $ENJOY were created. Here, the boundary between Open Edition NFTs, Memecoins, and creative tokenization gradually blurred, further enhancing the market's understanding of creative monetization. The current Zora social app user experience is very close to Web3's Instagram, with the key difference being the ability to earn money through posts. A tweet on February 4, 2025, indicated that Zora would overcome the limitations of ERC1155 NFTs, making each tweet a Memecoin.

Zora Ecosystem Interaction

Although the first snapshot has ended, according to the announcement, there should be 1 to 2 months before the official airdrop in "spring," and the specific rules of the snapshot are still unknown. Here, the author has also compiled some Zora ecosystems that can participate. In such a risky market situation, it is worth participating in low-risk investments.

From LayerHub's data, it is seen that most wallets have only 1-5 interactions. Since the rules have not been announced, a more secure approach is to ensure that your address is in the top 30%, which is 21 or more interactions. Of course, there are other rule points, and you can check your ranking in the Zora chain through the Zora Airdrop Dashboard provided by KARTOD.

Trade Tweets on Zora

This is the simplest and most relevant way to interact with a project. First, log in to the website using your computer or mobile device to interact with any post. You can choose to tip the tweet with Sparks, like and comment on it, or even create a tweet of your own and mint a tweet NFT.

Alternatively, you can directly purchase someone else's tweet NFT. It is recommended to interact with a more stablecoin to reduce slippage. Since all tweet NFTs are minted on UniSwap, you can also use the Uniswap V4 Hook integration strategy to automate TX brushing (not necessarily eligible for airdrops). The specific strategy should be adjusted according to the market. For example, for $ENJOY, on the Zora network, execute a concentrated liquidity injection of the ENJOY/WETH pool (e.g., with 550–700k ENJOY/WETH pool concentrated liquidity injection, 550–700k ENJOY≈50U) using a Delta-neutral strategy to reduce volatility.

Official ZORA NFTs

Zora has collaborated with many projects in the past to release NFTs. However, the minting phase has now ended, and it is uncertain whether purchase transactions are considered for airdrop eligibility. Therefore, it may be advisable to wait for new NFT releases in the coming months for minting. Second-tier NFTs belonging to ZORA's official collection are more likely to be included in airdrops.

This time, Zora has decided to issue $ZORA as a Memecoin, which may have some market sentiment considerations. However, I believe this aligns more with their product ethos of "building a free and valuable internet." When every like, every retweet, every tweet becomes a tradable Memecoin, and even project tokens are Memecoins, we might be witnessing the online reincarnation where everyone owns their "creative asset" on-chain.