Polyhedra is showing appreciation for its loyal community in the wake of a dramatic liquidity crisis last month. On July 1, the project announced the launch of its Phoenix Revival Program a new initiative designed to reward users who held their ground during one of the most turbulent moments in the protocol’s history.
In a post shared on X, Polyhedra revealed that the program specifically targets on-chain stakers who held Polyhedra Network’s ZKJ tokens on either Ethereum or BNB Chain as of 13:00 UTC on June 15 the very day the project’s token took a massive hit.
Eligible users won’t just get a simple payout. Instead, they’ll gain early access to future ecosystem airdrops, plus a share of incentives tied to upcoming Polyhedra products. These include an array of ambitious offerings such as Polyhedra’s zero-knowledge machine learning (ZKML) platform, a privacy-focused stablecoin designed to be compliance-friendly, and a dark pool trading protocol for confidential transactions.
Reward sizes will depend on each user’s staking power at the time of the snapshot, making the program a direct nod to those who stayed committed during the crisis.
The launch of the Phoenix Revival Program comes as part of a broader strategic shift for Polyhedra. The project is now pivoting its roadmap to focus on zero-knowledge (zk) infrastructure, planning to build out its Dark Pool decentralized exchange, the privacy stablecoin, and a zk-powered inference engine for machine learning. Polyhedra also has its sights set on rolling out EXPchain a new Layer 1 blockchain specifically designed for zk applications.
This pivot follows a dramatic event on June 15, when Polyhedra’s ZKJ token crashed from roughly $2 down to below $0.35. The plunge was sparked by a large-scale liquidity withdrawal on PancakeSwap, where one wallet pulled $4.3 million in LP tokens and then swiftly dumped over 1.5 million ZKJ tokens.
Adding fuel to the chaos, blockchain sleuths noticed additional ZKJ deposits into exchanges from a wallet linked to Wintermute during the same period, although no direct connection to the attack has been confirmed. The crisis deepened when cascading liquidations on Bybit erased up to $97 million in leveraged long positions in less than two hours.
In response, Polyhedra tried to stabilize the situation by injecting $30 million worth of stablecoins into decentralized exchange liquidity pools and launching a token buyback program. Still, ZKJ hasn’t fully rebounded. At press time, the token is trading around $0.205 a staggering 89% drop over the past month and down 94% from its all-time high of $4.01 set in March 2024.
Despite the volatility, Polyhedra’s team remains committed to building out its ambitious tech roadmap and says it’s determined to reward users who continued to believe in the project through its recent upheaval.
