On June 17, ZKsync’s highly anticipated token, ZK -5.14% , launched with a market capitalization of over $1 billion.

Following a momentary increase within the first few hours of launch, ZK's market capitalization gradually decreased over the following days, likely due to sustained sell pressure from airdrop recipients and poor wider market conditions.

The market capitalization of ZK currently stands at ~$600 million, with a fully diluted valuation of $3.4 billion at the time of writing, a 40% decrease from its valuation at launch.

In the week leading up to the ZK launch, Zsync Era experienced a relatively calm period in terms of new unique addresses on the chain, averaging around 7,000 per day. The ZK token launch day saw this figure skyrocket, however, with the number of new unique addresses more than doubling to 18,000 on June 17.

The excitement didn't fizzle out after the initial launch. The next day, this figure surged by over 76% to 31,800 new unique addresses, and by the day after that, on June 19, it climbed another 12% to make it 35,800 new unique addresses for the day. Meanwhile, the 7-day moving average for transactions on ZKsync Era hit a three-month high on the day of the ZK token launch, with over 1.8 million transactions recorded as users flocked to claim their airdrops.

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Unfortunately for the network, this uptick in activity proved to be short-lived. The chain’s transaction count plummeted by 37% the very next day, and it continued its nosedive with another 32% drop the day after that.

The 7-day moving average for active addresses on Zync Era painted a similarly dramatic picture. On the day of the ZK token launch, the network saw an all-time high of nearly 675,000 active addresses. Just three days after the token launch, the number of active addresses had halved. This sharp decline underscores how the initial spike was likely driven by dormant airdrop farming addresses suddenly springing to life to claim their long-awaited tokens.

This is an excerpt from The Block's Data & Insights newsletter. Dig into the numbers making up the industry’s most thought-provoking trends.