What is Zora crypto?

Zora is a crypto platform where artists, musicians and other creators publish work onchain and others can trade tokens tied to it. It began in 2020 as an NFT minting platform and has shifted toward social media, where posts become tradable coins. The name covers three things: the Zora app, the Zora Network blockchain and the ZORA token.

What is Zora Network?

Zora Network is a layer 2 blockchain built on Optimism's technology. CoinDesk reported its launch on June 21, 2023, with the goal of making minting on Zora faster and cheaper, and said minting an NFT on it cost under 50 cents according to Zora's documentation. CoinDesk named Jacob Horne as co-founder and chief executive.

Zora's newer coins live on Base instead. The coins protocol documentation lists Base as its main network.

How do Zora coins work?

Zora's docs describe two main kinds of coin, both standard ERC-20 tokens with a fixed supply of 1 billion:

• Creator coins. Each profile gets one, with the username as its ticker. Half the supply vests to the creator over five years and half can be traded immediately. Creator coins are paired with ZORA.
• Content coins. Each post becomes its own coin, paired with the creator's coin. The creator gets 10 million tokens at launch.

Every coin trades in its own Uniswap v4 pool with a custom hook, a feature explained in what are Uniswap v4 hooks. Standard coins charge a 1% trading fee, split between the creator, referrers, the protocol and liquidity, with rewards paid out in ZORA. To deter bots that buy in the first instant, a launch tax starts at 99% and falls away over 10 seconds.

Decrypt described Zora as competing with coin-minting platforms on Solana such as Pump.fun, which is known for launching meme coins.

What is the Zora token?

ZORA began trading on April 23, 2025, on Base. The Block reported a total supply of 10 billion, with 10% given to early users through an airdrop that had to be claimed manually. Zora had said the token was for fun only and gave holders no governance rights or claim on company equity.

What is the Zora app used for?

The app is where people create and trade coins. Decrypt reported in August 2025 that Zora had been added to the Base App in July, letting users mint coins without leaving it, and that Dune data showed about 47,000 new coins from 21,000 creators on August 10, 2025. Developers can build their own apps on the protocol with Zora's Coins SDK.