Ethereum Layer 2 Network zkSync Era Jumps to Nearly $250M in Locked Value

Ethereum scaling blockchain zkSync Era has attracted over $245 million in around three weeks after launch as investors search for the next big bets to place on newer projects building on upstart networks.

Data from L2Beat, which tracks activity on layer 2 networks built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, shows over 70,000 ether (ETH), $81 million in USD coin (USDC) stablecoin and $8 million in mute (MUTE) tokens have been locked on zkSync since March 22, when the network first launched.

The TVL amount is distributed among several zkSync-based projects for purchasing ecosystem tokens or providing liquidity to exchanges on the network.

DefiLlama data shows on-chain exchange Syncswap leads in total value locked (TVL) among Era-based services, with over $64 million. It is followed by Velocore at $25 million and Mute at $15 million.

Users can earn up to 80% in annualized rewards by providing liquidity or executing trades on these platforms – which may be driving capital to Era leading to value accrual for tokens such as mute, issued by the Mute DEX.

On-chain derivatives trading has not caught up among Era users so far, data suggests. Era-based Onchain Trade, a derivatives decentralized exchange (DEX), holds just over $2 million in TVL and has seen zero volumes for futures in the past 24 hours. Spot trading on the DEX, however, has racked up $600,000 in volume.

Meanwhile, some meme coins fashioned after the Shiba Inu dog breed – on which popular tokens dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB) are based – are seeing cycles of brisk price surges followed by a dump, DEXTools data shows.

As such, more than 7 million transactions have been conducted on the network since launch, The network can process 3.5 transactions per second.

ZkSync is named after the so-called ZK-rollups, which are a type of blockchain scaling system based on cryptography known as zero-knowledge proofs.

These features are seen as a key advance in speeding up blockchain transactions and reducing the cost of network activity.