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The entire ecosystem around Optimism, a layer 2 acceleration solution built on Ethereum, has had a very active time. Many announcements and events related to Optimism have caused the price of Optimism's token (OP) to increase in price.
More importantly, however, the overall ecosystem is seeing more activity on the part of developers as well as users. Optimism is also slowly catching up with one of its biggest layer 2 competitors on Ethereum, Arbitrum. But before XEM at their current state, let's XEM at what Optimism is and the news we've seen in the first 2 months of this year.
What is Optimism (OP)?
Optimism (OP) is a layer 2 accelerated solution built on the Ethereum blockchain. Its goal is to enable fast and cheap transactions while maintaining the security and decentralization of the Ethereum network. Optimism is one of the most potential acceleration solutions for Ethereum and has attracted a lot of attention from the community.
One of the key features of Optimism is its optimistic roll-up technology, which allows multiple transactions to be bundled into a single transaction, resulting in faster and cheaper transactions. This is done by processing transactions off-chain and then committing them to the Ethereum blockchain in batches.
Optimism's rolling-up technology is different from other acceleration solutions, as it does not require any changes to the Ethereum network itself. Instead, it works by building a separate chain that periodically updates the Ethereum network . Optimism's ecosystem includes a range of tools and services designed to make it easier for developers and users to interact with the network. These include:
- Optimistic Optimism Virtual Machine (OVM): a full, EVM-compatible environment that allows developers to write and deploy smart contracts on the Optimism network.
- Optimism Gateway : a bridge that connects the Ethereum network to the Optimism network, allowing users to transfer assets between the two networks.
- Optimism Discovery Suite : a block browser that provides users with real-time data about transactions, smart contracts, and other activities on the Optimism network.
- Optimism Test Network : a test network that allows developers to test their apps and smart contracts in a sandbox environment before deploying them on the Mainnet.
- Optimism Grants : the program that provides funding and support to projects under construction on the Optimism network.
Lots of positive news
However, the purpose of this article is not to discuss Optimism in detail, but rather to XEM various news that have been published recently regarding Optimism . And there has been a lot, affecting the overall ecosystem of Optimism as well as its OP token.
First of all, it is important to note that recent talking points and events related to Optimism are not any kind of nonsense information or false positive emotions. This has been done for the past few months. For example, bullish Ethereum daily transactions have been steadily increasing for over a year now. And while they were down significantly at the end of January, the trend is slowly returning to the upside over time.
This has shown an increase in activity around the token. And here are some of the most important news that have been announced from all things related to Optimism, its developers and its ecosystem.
Update Bedrock
One of the biggest news regarding Optimism was the announcement of the “Bedrock” Upgrade , announced in early February. This upgrade will help Optimism sanitize transaction fees and speed. It will also lay the groundwork for future innovations like decentralized arrangements that will help Optimism compete with one of its main competitors – Arbitrum.
“OP Labs expects Bedrock to be the cheapest roll-up on Ethereum.”
That was the declaration of Kunal Goel from Messari. Goel is also joined by Zainab Hasan from Xord research, who claims that with Bedrock, Optimism has a chance of becoming the first EVM-based roll-up that can provide the same security guarantees as Ethereum.
News regarding the Bedrock upgrade has been very well received by the community and has caused the OP token price to increase by more than 20% in less than 24 hours after the announcement was announced. This upgrade is slated to go live and roll out on March 15, but is currently underway.
Bedrock Update of Optimism (OP), Source- coinmarketcal.com
Surprise second AirDrop
In early February, the Optimism Network did a surprise AirDrop . Over 11.7 million OP tokens were distributed to over 300,000 wallets to distribute approximately 19% of the total supply of governance tokens.
The first AirDrop was conducted in May of last year with an amount of about 5%, or about 200 million tokens. The community reaction was not surprising as the token dropped in price quite quickly after the AirDrop. Tokens drop about 13% after being distributed, which is quite a common phenomenon in the crypto world.
The tokens are mainly distributed to people who have previously spent Gas fee to make transactions on the blockchain. In addition, those who have delegated voting rights to other users also receive OP tokens, as this activity is actively utilized by the Optimism Collective, the organization behind Optimism, as an activity to strengthen the governance system. of blockchain.
From Collab.Land to Coinbase
At the end of February, the Optimism Network has more reasons to rejoice. One of them was another surprise AirDrop , announced by Collab.Land, the automated management tool, in which over two million wallets received COLLAB tokens. The CEO of Abridged, the company behind Collab.Land, says that this is just the beginning of the whole distribution process.
However, perhaps the biggest news of the past few weeks regarding Optimism has been Coinbase's announcement. The crypto exchange says it will use Optimism to launch its Ethereum Base layer 2 product. Among other things, the announcement said:
“Base aims to be decentralized, permissionless and open to anyone with the vision of creating a super-strong, standard, agnostic scrollable chain powered by Optimism. We will join Optimism as a lead developer on the open source OP Stack and work to create a vibrant developer community of other developers.”
This will help Optimism be more connected to the vast crypto infrastructure and increase its presence across the ecosystem. Once again, this news helps to rekindle the debate about the success of this project, as it seems to be growing on several levels.
Velodrome (VELO) is getting more and more popular
Speaking of growth, the biggest market on Optimism, Velodrome (VELO), is also going up. This decentralized exchange has increased its weekly fees thanks to its record trading volume and growing popularity of Optimism.
Optimism and Velodrome tokens are also the most traded trading pairs in conjunction with USDC. Trading pairs OP/USDC and VELO/USDC are generating the largest trading fees thanks to the growing popularity of both projects.
The positivity around Velodrome can also be seen through the decentralized exchange rankings and the key value on it. With about $320 million, Velodrome is in 7th place behind only Sushiswap, Curve or Uniswap exchanges ( https://bingx.com/en-us/guide/detail/what-is-uniswap-a- beginners-guide/ ) has a higher TVL. This is only supported by the chart above, which shows the growing number of Velo token holders.
Number of holders of VELO token, Source- dune.com
The positivity around Velodrome can also be seen through the decentralized exchange rankings and the key value on it. With about $320 million, Velodrome is in 7th place behind only Sushiswap, Curve or Uniswap exchanges with higher TVL. This is only supported by the chart above, which shows the growing number of Velo token holders.
Optimism vs Arbitrum
Furthermore, compared to Arbitrum, Optimism has had greater community traction and engagement than its rival. It has steadily and significantly increased in many key data points such as active address count or total key value (TVL).
Optimism vs Arbitrum number of active addresses, Source- coindesk.com
The continued growth for both projects has certainly been one of the main themes of many analysts. Currently, these two projects are seeing a lot of positive signals and working in different ways. Research analyst at Kaiko, a Paris-based crypto data provider, spoke about the current pace of development of Optimism and Arbitrum as follows:
“One of the big stories of 2023 seems to be layer-2 and the only way to have direct access to them is through the OP token. TVL on Optimism also overtook Arbitrum, its closest competitor, to start the year.”
Optimism is trying to fight back
The token Optimism (OP) is trying to reach its peak is the same way. While this token has experienced a strong downtrend since its launch last year, it is slowly hitting previous highs. In January and February of this year, OP generated his ATH , after increasing from $0.7 in October 2022 to $3.2 at the end of February. Considering that this token is only experiencing a devastating crypto Bearish , the OP is not doing as bad as many people think right now.
OP token price chart, Source- coinmarketcap.com
Conclude
Overall, Optimism is a potential enhancement to Ethereum that could significantly sanitize the speed and cost of transactions on the network. Its ecosystem is well designed and includes a wide range of tools and services that help developers and users interact with the network, which is currently seen on many different levels.
Current news and developments brought by service providers like Collab.Land, Coinbase, Velodrome or Optimism Network itself prove this. The overall ecosystem built around this layer 2 acceleration solution shows that it has a lot to offer and with the current rate of sanitize and positive sentiment, it seems very difficult to stop anything. any time.
