ZORA rallied as high as 44% on May 26 following buzz around a new token launched by ex-Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan.
ZORA (ZORA) climbed to an intraday high of $0.0135 on May 26, lifting its market cap beyond $38 million, as trading volume surged 256% to top $48 million in 24 hours.
Momentum picked up after several users on X reported that Srinivasan had deployed a new token titled “The Network State”, named after his 2022 book, on the Zora platform. The token went live on May 26, 2025, and quickly stirred up buzz in the community.
For those unfamiliar, Zora lets users mint content from decentralized social apps like Farcaster into ERC-20 tokens. That includes text posts, images, videos, or audio, basically anything users would normally post on social media, but on-chain. Once minted, these “content coins” can be listed and traded on platforms like Uniswap.
Users upload their media, set the title and price, and Zora handles the minting. Once live, the content becomes a tradable asset in a decentralized marketplace, where community demand determines its value.
Within hours of launch, the Network State token reportedly saw its market cap swing between $2.7 million and $7 million, signaling strong initial interest.
While it’s a separate asset from ZORA, the shared platform and Balaji’s name seem to have indirectly boosted sentiment for ZORA itself.
Investors are likely betting on the broader Zora platform gaining traction from the attention. Many users on X pointed out that ZORA may be a safer and more liquid proxy play for those who want exposure to the hype without directly aping into the brand-new token.
What is Zora?
Zora was launched in May 2020 by three former Coinbase employees as a creator-first NFT platform designed to decentralise media and empower content ownership. Initially built to support the minting and trading of NFTs, the platform later evolved to allow users to tokenise on-chain content from decentralised social apps.
In 2023, Zora introduced its own Layer 2 network to improve scalability and reduce costs for content publishing.
By 2025, it expanded further with the launch of a native token, ZORA, described as “a memecoin for the Zora community.” Despite having its own chain, the team launched the token on Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2, on April 23 to tap into its wider user base.
The token has a capped supply of 10 billion. Distribution includes a 10% airdrop to early users, 20% for community incentives, and 5% for liquidity. The rest is split among the treasury, team, and strategic contributors, all subject to vesting schedules.
In May 2022, Zora secured a $50 million funding round that valued the platform at $600 million. The round was led by Haun Ventures, with backing from Coinbase Ventures and Kindred Ventures.