Zora chain announces long-awaited ZORA token launch on April 23

Zora chain announced its long-awaited token generation event, which will favor early adoption. The L2 chain had one of the longest-running airdrop farming programs. 

Zora will launch its native ZORA token on April 23. This will complete one of the long-awaited token generation events (TGE) of 2025. The project announced that the airdrop will have a broad snapshot period and will favor early adopters. 

The Zora snapshot will go as far back as 2020, spanning multiple years of usage as a token-free protocol. 

Snapshot 1 includes activity from 00:00:00 UTC January 1, 2020 up until 14:00:00 UTC March 3, 2025.

Snapshot 2 includes activity from 14:00:00 UTC March 3, 2025 up until 00:00:00 UTC April 20, 2025.

— zora (@zora) April 20, 2025

The announcement almost immediately caused concerns that short-term users may receive a similar allocation to those who have been exposed to Zora for years. The project is yet to announce the exact allocations. 

Currently, user-generated allocation checkers are testing the top user addresses of prominent influencers. Zora offered multiple potential apps and activities over the years, including total ETH spent, posting, the minting of posts, referrals, rewards, and NFT ownership and usage. 

The Zora TGE announcement arrives just days after the chain started carrying a content coin, connected to the Base chain. The token lost value quickly after its launch, causing concern about shilling risky tokens, even with the backing of reliable chains like Base. The token, Base is for Everyone, quickly crashed after the announcement that it is not an official Base asset.

The exact utility of the token remains uncertain, leading to speculations that ZORA may launch as a meme asset, with no specific utility or security role. Pre-launch, ZORA is priced at $0.03 on the OTC market, with price pressures and risks from insider allocations. 

The unprecedented span of the snapshot goes through several crypto cycles and trends. Zora is a chain specifically created for NFT activity, and usage has been tied to some of the pre-approved collections. Zora NFTs are currently trading at relatively low prices, as the whole space has lost its appeal. 

Zora chain aims for L2 growth

While awaiting an airdrop, Zora retained a baseline activity for up to 10K active daily addresses. Zora was one of the minor L2 chains launched in the past years, which aimed for the spotlight. However, the chain mostly focused on NFTs and content, ending up with almost no DeFi apps and rock-bottom TVL. 

Zora is also ranked as a Stage 0 chain, using the Optimistic Rollup technology. Zora has not yet proven its decentralized consensus, and can fall victim to malicious proposals. Despite this, Zora has gained attention as an L2 specifically built for social media and on-chain fun. 

Zora managed to raise $60M, becoming one of the large-scale L2 projects during the 2021 bull market. The chain had support from Coinbase Ventures, and may continue to see support or even listings for the new token.

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