zkSync Era trumps competition: What it means for you

• zkSync Era recorded the highest cumulative transactions over the past month for any L2.
• zkSync Era’s TPS of 7.39 was the second-highest in the last 24 hours.

The crowded Ethereum [ETH] layer-2 landscape continued to see steady expansion, as several networks competed for the title of the most effective scaling solution.

zkSync Era ranks high in network activity

zkSync Era, launched earlier in the year, has been one of the great success stories of 2023.

The zero-knowledge rollup (zk-rollup), outperformed market leaders like Optimism [OP] and Arbitrum [ARB] in daily unique addresses for five consecutive months, according to a post by Ethereum Daily.

zkSync Era has also dominated other aspects of network activity. It facilitated the most daily transactions of any significant L2 in the market for much of the last three months, data from Artemis revealed.

Source: Artemis

Moreover, it beat competition to log the highest cumulative transactions over the past month, according to L2Beat. zkSync Era’s count of 24.82 million was 46% higher than that of second-best Arbitrum.

zkSync Era also provided a high average throughput of 7.39 transactions per second (TPS) in the last 24 hours. Only Arbitrum with a past day TPS of 8.6 was higher on the list.

Source: L2Beat

Higher transaction fees, a pain point

While zkSync excelled at one of the aspects of scaling solutions, there were reservations about the other. According to L2Fees, the rollup charged one of the highest fees for validating transactions.

It required $0.09 to send one ETH on zkSync Era, higher than most major rollups. Additionally, the cost to swap tokens was $0.25, significantly higher than $0.10 and $0.15 on Optimism and Arbitrum respectively.

Is an AirDrop on the way?

As with other tokenless networks, zkSync Era’s strong network activity fueled speculations of a potential AirDrop. This despite the fact that zkSync has made no official AirDrop announcements.

AirDrops have been a debatable topic within the cryptocurrency community. While some treat them as marketing gimmicks, the proponents believe they can have a strong impact on user engagement and overall project success.

A good case in point was Arbitrum which recorded a sharp uptick in most important indicators after its March AirDrop.