"Super-advanced but useless to anyone"

These projects attracted many users through airdrops, and their protocols achieved high activity levels. They were heavily promoted in thematic communities and through word of mouth, quickly gaining popularity. At the time of their exchange listings, their market capitalizations soared to hundreds of millions of dollars.

However, this activity was artificial: users made numerous transactions hoping to receive free tokens later. Some crypto enthusiasts even created entire "farms," including bots, to generate high volumes of transactions. But are these projects still doing well? Let's take a closer look.

Starknet (STRK)

Starknet is a Layer-2 (L2) scaling solution for the Ethereum network. Its mainnet launched at the end of 2021.

With an $8 billion valuation, Starknet secured over $280 million in funding from top-tier funds like Sequoia Capital, Pantera Capital, and Coinbase Ventures.

Starknet utilizes ZK-rollups (Zero Knowledge Rollups), a technology that batches transactions into rollups and sends them to the Ethereum main chain for validation. These ZK-rollups can process transactions without revealing users' private data.

The STRK token was launched in February 2024. Right after the airdrop, network activity dropped by more than half: from over 100,000 active users to just 43,000.

According to Token Terminal, Starknet has over 3,000 daily active users, ranking last among L2 solutions. OP Mainnet (formerly Optimism) has nearly 168,000 daily users, and Arbitrum boasts 234,000.

As of May 2025, the STRK token ranks 124th on CoinMarketCap with a market capitalization of $469 million, far behind Optimism (OP), which has a market cap of over $1.1 billion.

Starknet's current valuation is far lower than at the time of listing ($1.4 billion), indicating weak investor interest. Despite this, Starknet remains among the top ten L2 solutions, though Arbitrum, Polygon, and Mantle continue to dominate the space.

ZKsync (ZK)

Another Layer-2 solution aiming for the top of the segment, ZKsync, is also based on Zero-Knowledge Proofs using ZK rollups.

The team initially expected ZKsync to quickly rise to the top of the L2 sector following the main net launch. However, things didn't go as planned.

As of May 2025, ZKsync is in worse shape than Starknet, ranking 184th by market capitalization on CoinMarketCap.

At launch, the ZK token's market cap was $786 million, but by May 2025, it had plummeted to $246 million.

While ZKsync has better daily user activity than Starknet, it still doesn't rank in the top 10 L2 networks. Token Terminal reports around 13,600 daily active users on ZKsync Era.

A major blow came after a controversial airdrop, during which team members were accused of hoarding tokens, leaving many active users empty-handed. The community's backlash caused ZKsync's Total Value Locked (TVL) to crash from $200 million to $128 million.

The situation worsened with a hack in April 2025 that compromised around 110 million ZK tokens. Since listing, the ZK token has lost nearly 80% of its value.

Scroll (SCR)

Scroll is a Layer-2 solution based on zkEVM (a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine). Like other projects on this list, Scroll had been developing for years, but demand fizzled out after its long-awaited airdrop.

Since the SCR token's exchange debut in October 2024, its market cap has fallen more than threefold, from $220 million to $68 million by May 2025. That ranks the asset 465th overall, behind little-known shitcoins like IAGON (IAG) and Nero Ethereum (NEIRO).

Token Terminal shows that Scroll has just 6,500 daily active users. The airdrop also faced criticism, with many participants unhappy about the number of tokens received and what they perceived as an unfair distribution. This hurt user activity.

Before the airdrop, Scroll had around 60,000 active users — but within six months, that number dropped nearly tenfold, indicating weak protocol demand.

Conclusion

The current state of these new Layer-2 solutions highlights the increasing competition in the L2 space. However, leading developers like Polygon and Arbitrum continue to evolve and, thanks to their strong reputations, leave little room for newcomers, no matter how "technologically advanced" they may be.