Key points:
- Interest in the Optimism blockchain has spiked higher in the last 24 hours.
- The higher interest was driven by rumours regarding the Optimism token.
- Many investors were expecting the platform to launch its native token.
The Optimism layer 2 blockchain has been around since early 2021, but investor interest in the crypto has surged in the past 24 hours after the project issued a progress update.
The blockchain project noted that it had saved over $1.1 billion in gas fees since its launch after facilitating transactions worth over $17.4 billion. In addition, the platform attracted over 300,000 unique crypto addresses while generating $24.5 million in revenues. Finally, the platform has secured $900 million in value.
Also read: AI And Automated Trading In The Crypto Markets.
Investors were impressed by the project’s achievements, but the statement at the bottom of the tweet grabbed investors' attention. The blockchain project had said that “A new chapter is near”, which made many investors believe that it was about to launch or airdrop a native token.
Crypto investors rushed to stake their Synthetix (SNX) tokens hoping that they would be the first to benefit from a future airdrop or launch of Optimism’s native token. Instead, the SNX token rallied to 7.1896 following the tweet, with the total value locked on the platform surging by 13.4%.
Investors are betting that Optimism will release its native token on the Synthetix platform since it was the first platform to engage with the layer 2 blockchain.
However, the project has no confirmation of any plans to issue a native token soon. Hence, investors may be positioning themselves for an event that may not happen soon.
As for the project’s merits, Optimism prides itself on being a layer-2 scaling solution for the Ethereum network that uses Optimistic Rollups to process a massive number of transactions off of the Ethereum network.
Given the upcoming merge set to slash Ethereum's gas fees drastically and exponentially improve its transaction speed, many wonder what will happen to the layer 1 network’s scaling solutions.
It might be time for Optimism to launch its native token before Ethereum’s merge later in the summer eradicates the need for layer 2 scaling solutions built off its network.
The Optimism platform currently benefits from the demand for scaling solutions from 30 separate projects that need it to scale, led by Synthetix, Stargate Finance, Uniswap and the Perpetual Network, which are some of the biggest blockchain platforms.
Meanwhile, investors who have been interacting with the project from the beginning stand to be rewarded for their efforts if Optimism launches a native token. Unfortunately, until then, we do not have a price chart to analyse and compare the Optimism token/coin prices.