Zircuit Attracts More Than $1B In Pre-Mainnet Deposits Over Six Weeks – The Defiant

Zircuit, an Ethereum Layer 2 network, has quietly amassed more than $1 billion worth of ETH and Ether staking derivatives just six weeks after opening its doors to deposits.

According to Dune Analytics, 333,839 Ether worth of ETH, liquid staking tokens (LSTs), and restaking tokens (LRTs) have been deposited to the project, worth $1.11 billion at current prices. The network also holds more than $45.9 million worth of stablecoins, mostly comprising Ethena’s yield-bearing USDe token.

Zircuit launched its points campaign on Feb. 24, allowing users to stake ETH and Ether staking derivatives in exchange for earning Zircuit Points — which are expected to qualify holders for a future airdrop — in addition to the yield and points accumulated by the deposited assets.

The project followed up with its “Build to Earn” program on March 27, incentivizing developers to build infrastructure, tooling, or deploy dApps to Zircuit’s testnet — which went live in November.

The network’s impressive pre-mainnet rise to prominence is reminiscent of Blast’s rapid emergence as a leading L2.

Blast, a Layer 2 from the team behind Blur, the leading NFT marketplace by trade volume, ranked as the third-largest L2 with a more than $2 billion total value locked (TVL) when it completed its mainnet launch on Feb. 29.

The project was the first high-profile Layer 2 to lure heavy deposits before shipping any code with the allure of points on top of the native rewards from supported yield-bearing assets. Blast launched a one-way deposit contract in mid-November, and had attracted more than $500M worth of assets less than one week later.

Unlike Blast, Zircuit’s pre-mainnet deposits can be withdrawn at any time.

Zircuit is a hybrid rollup combining zero-knowledge proofs with optimistic infrastructure. It also boasts full compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), Ethereum’s core smart contract engine, meaning existing applications supporting EVM execution can easily port their code onto the network.

The network claims to offer faster transactions without spiking fees through compression, with Zircuit previously receiving grants funding from the Ethereum Foundation for its research into rollup compression and scaling cryptography.