Zeta Markets, one Solana SOL
-3.97%
-based decentralized exchange for trading crypto perpetuals, will launch and release its ‘governance’ token Z.
The Z token will have a total supply of 1 billion, of which 10% or 100 million will be distributed via an airdrop, Zeta said on Tuesday. Half of that 10% will be dropped to active traders and community members of Zeta, determined by their Z-Score, an ongoing points system on the platform. Another 1% will be allocated to Zeta users who are part of strategic communities in Solana, while the remaining 4% will be rewarded to Z-stakers, Zeta said.
Zeta founder Tristan Frizza told The Block that the Z token is expected to launch in May, which is when airdrop claims will also begin. Frizza said the snapshot will be announced “in the coming weeks.”
Frizza added that Zeta has received some listing offers for Z and is currently conducting due diligence on “several of the top exchanges.”
Z will ‘pioneer’ with the voting blocking model on Solana
Zeta said the Z token will pioneer the voting escrow model on Solana – the model that Curve pioneered Ethereum 
ETH
-4.93%
. The voting escrow model in Curve makes this possible 
CRV
-4.86%
(Curve’s governance token) holders to lock up or escrow their tokens for a specified period of time to earn voting rights. The longer CRV tokens are in custody, the greater the voting power they accrue. This system encourages stakeholders to make decisions that benefit the Curve protocol in the long term.
“The general premise is that token stakers will be rewarded with exponentially more voting power and token rewards by staking for longer periods of time,” Frizza said.
After the token launch, 30% of Z’s total supply will be focused on incentivizing maker and taker traders, Zeta said.
Zeta’s venture capital investors own about 17.5% of Z’s total supply, Frizza said, adding that their tokens were acquired over a three-year period after launch, with a one-year cliff.
Founded in 2021, Zeta is backed by leading venture investors including Electric Capital, Jump Capital, Wintermute and Solana Ventures.
Zeta launches Solana L2 combination pack
Following the token launch, Zeta plans to release a Solana Layer 2 rollup this year. “Essentially, we are building the first DeFi Layer 2 on Solana,” Frizza said. “It will use Solana exclusively as a settlement and DA [data availability] low, which allows us to achieve faster settlement times and cheaper DA fees than comparable Ethereum rollups.”
“It allows us to build an extremely powerful exchange comparable to centralized exchanges and similarly alleviates the congestion issues we are currently experiencing on Solana Layer 1,” Frizza added.
The technical details of Zeta’s L2 package will be released in the whitepaper “within a few weeks,” Frizza said.
