Optimism-Based Projects Surge on Airdrop Token Rumors

Several projects using Ethereum’s layer 2 scaling solution, Optimism, have seen their native token prices surge by around 20% amid rumors that the Optimism network will soon launch tokens and airdrop them to the community.

Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution that leverages Optimistic Rollups to process a high volume of transactions from the Ethereum blockchain. The project claims that it can operate smart contracts 5 to 500 times cheaper than Ethereum's first layer.

According to DefiLlama, the platform currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $496.47 million across 30 different projects including Synthetix, UniSwap, Stargate Finance, and Perpetual Protocol.

Rumors of a possible distribution of tokens to users of the related project began to circulate on Twitter earlier today after Optimism published a blog post titled "The New Chapter," which looked back at the project's inception early last year. performance since then and outlines its plans for the future.

The team highlighted important milestones over the past 12 months, such as $17.4 billion in transaction volume, $24.5 million in revenue, and $1.1 billion in gas savings.

While Optimism didn’t directly say anything about the launch or airdrop of the native token, onlookers highlighted the last section of the post, which outlines a new phase of development that will be driven by the community:

"The web is growing fast and getting better every day. Our baby is walking and almost running. We're nearing the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next - driven by community ownership and governance."

Commenting on the wording of the post, self-proclaimed “airdrop guru” “OlimpioCrypto” suggested to their 7,164 Twitter followers that Synthetix (SNX) might be the token to watch for a potential airdrop, as Synthetix was the first protocol to start working with Optimism .

“The team at Optimism started using Synthetix before any other protocol. $SNX holders, you may be in for a treat. Staking tokens may be a play,” they wrote.

A similar account called "defi_airdrops" also pointed to other popular Optimism projects such as the Hop Protocol, Lyra Finance, and the Polynomial protocol.

While not all Optimism-related tokens are up, SNX, Lyra Finance (LYRA) and Synapse (SYN) have all seen significant increases in value over the 24-hour period.

According to data from CoinGecko, SYN rose 26.2 percent to $3.37, SNX rose 21.5 percent to $6.18 and LYRA rose 18.4 percent to $0.24.

Looking back at DefiLlama, Synthetix, the largest platform on Optimism, saw a 13.4% increase in TVL over the past 24 hours to about $203.3 million, suggesting that investors may be rushing into SNX in anticipation of Optimism’s announcement.