Zora, the native token of decentralized social network and content creation platform of the same name, is up 43% to $0.1372 in the past 24 hours.
The surge comes after remarkably strong performance in recent weeks. Zora has gained 129% in the past seven days and 1,566% over the past month, according to CoinGecko data.
The project, an Ethereum layer-2 network built with OP Stack, uses its token to incentivize and reward artists and musicians for sharing their work on the platform. It was launched on April 23, 2025, with 10% of the supply airdropped to early users.
The project's airdrop was briefly tangled in some controversy.
In April, the official Base account posted content that automatically minted as a tradable token through Zora. It triggered a trading frenzy before people realized it wasn't an official Base token. The asset shot to a $16.9 million market cap, then crashed 92% to $1.3 million within two hours.
A week later, the Zora team announced its airdrop and was accused of having coordinated the timing with the unofficial Base token mix-up.
According to Dune data, Zora activity had exploded around that time. Daily traders spiked 601%, from 40,638 the day before the campaign started to its all-time high on Sunday of 284,931. Throughout this period, the creator of Ethereum layer-2 network Base, Jesse Pollak, continued to wave the flag for the content coin movement as he posted on social media, went on a press tour, and continued buying tokens.
So it was a big boost for Zora when it was added to the Base App in mid-July, making it more accessible for retail investors. Users can mint their own tokens via the Zora platform without leaving the Base App, putting it in competition with other coin-minting platforms like the Solana-based Pump.fun and LetsBonk.
Since then, tokens created with Zora have reached market caps of up to $14.4 million, with brands like UK adult entertainment company FakeTaxi launching tokens.
Why is ZORA surging?
No major news announcement from the Zora team itself seems to have precipitated the recent surge. But on-chain metrics show a spike in coin creation activity on Sunday, August 10th.
According to on-chain analytics from Dune, there were 47,000 new issuances from 21,000 creators, the highest levels reported since July 31st.
Zora is likely also benefitting from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, launching ZORA/USDT and TAG/USDT perpetual futures trading pairs with up to 50x leverage late last month.
