Original author: Mia
原文来源： ChainCatcher
With the official release of Binance's 53rd new coin mining project, the liquidity re-staking protocol Renzo (REZ) has quickly become the focus of the crypto community. The Binance listing was expected to be a huge boon for Renzo, but it turned out to be unexpected. Instead of skyrocketing, TVL, which was supposed to rise, was drowned out by news about the de-anchoring of the Renzo derivative token ezETH. Within 24 hours of the listing announcement, ezETH was briefly unanchored, and the price fell as low as $2,262, resulting in some users being liquidated.
This sudden unanchoring incident unexpectedly gave some users a taste of the sweetness of buying the bottom. A giant whale keenly seized the opportunity and bought 2,499 ezETH worth $6.98 million with 2,400 ETH, netting 99 ETH. At the same time, the account associated with the wallet address 0xaa1 (related to czsamsunsb.eth) also earned 193 ETH, which is about $600,000.
This incident quickly aroused widespread concern and questions from users in the crypto community: "Obviously it is good, why did it suddenly become negative?" So, what happened to Renzo after the release of the listing news?
Coincidental point in time
According to relevant data, the unpegging of ezETH was detected at 11:17 on April 24, only 17 hours after Binance released the announcement of the new coin mining of Renzo (REZ), a liquidity re-staking protocol, and it is worth noting what happened in these 17 hours that will make ezETH unpeechable?
Tokenomics sparks community discontent
In the published tokenomics, only 5% and 2.5% of the airdrop and launchpool share allocated to the ezPoints campaign in the first quarter were allocated to the event. In addition, according to the airdrop rules, the first 5% of addresses will immediately unlock 50% of the tokens when they are at TGE, and the rest will be gradually released over the next 6 months. This design means that at TGE, most of the liquidity is actually still in the hands of the project team.
This fact has aroused doubts among some investors, who are skeptical of the "decentralization of the protocol" claimed by the project team, believing that there is a clear contradiction between this and the actual operation, and even saying that the project party advocates decentralization on the one hand, but on the other hand, it only airdrops 5% of the token supply, which is very ridiculous, and up to 70% of the token supply is still in the hands of insiders, and the so-called decentralization has not been realized at all.
This discontent quickly spread in the community, and the discussion about the "Renzo (REZ) tokenomics" continued to ferment and became the main trigger for ezETH's de-anchoring.
Some users believe that Binance stakers using Launchpool will have the opportunity to sell their tokens before the ezETH holders are airdropped, which has caused some ezETH stakers to sell, and some stakers want to use ETH to deploy other liquidity re-staking project tokens by selling ezETH.
Some users have pointed out on X that Renzo depicts the distribution of tokens with unevenly proportioned pie chart slices on X, which has led to confusion about how many REZ tokens are going and where. After adjusting the size, the pie chart actually shows that more than 60% of the tokens went to teams, investors, and advisors.
In addition, the airdrop rules show that 2% of the 5% airdrop in the first quarter (i.e., 0.1% of the total token supply) has been allocated to NFT communities such as Milady Maker and SchizoPosters, which do not appear to have any connection to the Renzo protocol itself, which has also raised concerns about insider trading.
Looping“死亡循环”
In fact, there was a "looping" leverage strategy in the previous Renzo airdrop reward campaign, that is, the airdrop farmer could sell ezETH for ETH and then redeposit ETH into the protocol to accumulate more rewards, which also caused users to exit by selling a large amount of ezETH.
The thin on-chain liquidity could not cope with the selling pressure and exacerbated the massive sell-off of ezETH, which led to a significant drop in the value of the token, which also led to a large number of liquidations in many lending markets, and it is reported that individuals holding leveraged positions in ezETH lost more than $50 million.
Renzo adjusts the airdrop rules in response to the community
The de-pegging phenomenon of ezETH tokens has attracted the attention of the Renzo project team. In the face of the community's doubts, the project team responded quickly yesterday, clarifying that the eligibility of the empty investment depends on the ezPoints at the time of the snapshot and has nothing to do with the ezETH balance at the snapshot (whether it is sold or not). Users whose Pendle YT expires before the snapshot will receive an air-invest qualification as long as their score meets the minimum criteria. NFT airdrops will be calculated based on the number of NFTs, not the number of wallets. However, such a response did not alleviate the concerns of community users, and ezETH is still in a "de-anchored" state.
When realizing that the root of the problem lies in the tokenomics and airdrop details, the Renzo project also made a series of corresponding adjustments to stabilize the community sentiment and save the coin price.
In response to users' dissatisfaction with the details of tokenomics, the project team increased the airdrop allocation ratio from 5% to 7% of the token in the first quarter. Renzo increased the airdrop to 12% of the total supply of 10 billion tokens, of which 7% of the tokens will be distributed in the first phase (going live at the end of the month) and 5% will be distributed in the subsequent phases. In addition, the claim date for the first airdrop has been updated to April 30.
According to the new airdrop criteria, participants with 360 or more Renzo points are eligible for the airdrop, and they can claim the airdrop in proportion to the token generation campaign based on the points. Previously, the top 5% of eligible wallets would receive half of the airdrops over the next six months. In the new update, 99% of eligible airdrop addresses will be fully unlocked after TGE, wallets with more than 500,000 ezPoints will be unlocked 50% at TGE, and the remainder will vest linearly over 3 months.
In addition, the project team also canceled the previous "revolving" leverage strategy to maintain the liquidity of ezETH.
According to CoinGecko, ezETH is currently quoted in the range of $3056-3121 on various platforms, and although it is still in a state of "de-anchoring", the price is steadily recovering, and the discount to ETH is narrowing.