ZeroLend is the largest lending market on Layer 2 networks like Linea, zkSync, Blast and Manta. It allows DeFi users to supply and borrow “exotic” assets such as liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), real-world assets (RWAs), and Bitcoin DeFi tokens (BTCFi).

Like all lending protocols, ZeroLend relies on incentives to encourage deposits in its markets and attract liquidity. By offering rewards, it ensures a steady inflow of assets, strengthening its lending pools and making the protocol more competitive.

ZeroLend initially managed its incentive programs in-house but quickly realized the limitations of this approach—each time they launched a new lending market on a different chain, they had to deploy incentives there as well. Managing everything internally also required significant resources, diverting focus away from their core product development.

That’s why incentive distribution experts exist—and that’s where Merkl comes in!

ZeroLend turned to Merkl to handle its incentive campaigns.

The first campaign kicked off in January 2025, rewarding users who supplied USDC on ZeroLend.

This was soon followed by additional campaigns, including the ZKsync Ignite program, which incentivized users to supply ETH and BTC on ZeroLend’s ZKsync markets.

By running its incentive campaigns through Merkl, ZeroLend unlocks several key benefits:

• Focus on what they do best without dedicating internal resources to incentive management.
• Distribute rewards even to users who supply the lending market on ZeroLend using third-party contracts such as staking contracts, or lending aggregators — aka Merkl reward forwarders.
• Mitigate farming and looping strategies that exploit reward programs.
• Get instant visibility on the Merkl app, where 10K+ daily LPs actively search for earning opportunities.

Since partnering with Merkl, ZeroLend has distributed over $180K in incentives — in stablecoins or ZK tokens — and generated over $30M in TVL.

Thanks to the Merkl API, ZeroLend was able to integrate Merkl's APR directly into the ZeroLend app, allowing users to clearly see the incentives being distributed alongside the Supply APR for an enhanced user experience.