“We are nearing the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next – one driven by community ownership and governance,” Optimism noted.
The prices of native tokens from multiple projects employing Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling solution, Optimism, are up around 20% amid rumors that the network will soon release a token and make it available to the community. .
Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution that uses Optimistic Rollups to process a large number of transactions outside of the Ethereum Blockchain. The project claims that it can operate smart contracts between five and 500 times cheaper than Ethereum’s layer 1.
According to DefiLlama, the platform currently has $496.47 million in Total Value Locked (TVL) from 30 different projects using it at scale, such as Synthetix, UniSwap, Stargate Finance, and Perpetual Protocol, to name a few.
Optimism’s Viewpoint
Rumors of a possible distribution of tokens to users of related projects started circulating on Twitter earlier today after Optimism posted a blog post titled “A New Chapter” recapping the performance of the project since its launch early last year and outlined its plans for the future.
The team highlighted major milestones from the past 12 months, including $17.4 billion in transaction volume, $24.5 million in revenue, and $1.1 billion in gas fee savings.
On Twitter, @optimismPBC posted the following, “Optimism’s story so far, by the numbers: Saved $1.1B in gas fees, On-boarded 300k unique addresses, Secured $900M of value, Facilitated $17.4B in TX volume, Generated $24.5M in revenue. A new chapter is near. Let’s take a minute to reflect on the path so far.”
Although Optimism did not directly state anything about launching a native token, the curious did highlight the last section of the post, which outlines a new stage of development that the community will drive. In respect to this, Optimism declared the following:
“The network has grown by leaps and bounds, and it only gets better day by day. Our baby has learned to walk, and it is almost time to run. We are nearing the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next: one driven by community ownership and governance.”
Reactions to Optimism’s Posts
Commenting on the wording of the post, self-styled “master launch hunter” “OlimpioCrypto” suggested to his 7,164 Twitter followers that Synthetix (SNX) could be the token to watch for potential launches, as Synthetix was the first protocol to start to work with Optimism.
“The Optimism team started working with Synthetix before any other protocol. SNX holders, there might be a gift in store for you. Keeping tokens staked might be the right move,” they wrote.
A similar account called “defi_airdrops” also pointed to other popular projects on Optimism like Hop Protocol, Lyra Finance, and the Polynomial Protocol.
Although not all Optimism-related tokens are pumping, over the last 24 hours SNX, Lyra Finance (LYRA), and Synapse (SYN) have all seen substantial increases in value.
According to CoinGecko data, SYN is up 26.2% to $3.37, SNX is up 21.5% to $6.18, and LYRA is up 18.4% to $0.24.
Based on the data from DefiLlama, Synthetix – the largest platform on Optimism – has seen its TVL gain 13.4% in the last 24 hours to reach some $203.3 million, suggesting that investors may be running to stake SNX in anticipation of an Optimism announcement.
By Audy Castaneda
