The rumors of a token airdrop by Optimism lead to its projects spiking on

Optimism, the famous Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, has seen native token prices rise by roughly 20% on rumors that the network will launch and airdrop a token for its community.

Optimism is a layer-2 scalability solution for the Ethereum network that uses Optimistic Rollups to execute a large number of transactions. The project claims to be able to run intelligent contracts for five to 500 times cheaper than Ethereum’s layer 1.

The platform now holds $496.47 million in total value locked (TVL) from 30 different applications, including Synthetix, UniSwap, Stargate Finance, and Perpetual Protocol, as per the data by DefiLlama.

The post by Optimism confused the community

Notably, in March, Optimism pulled $150 million in a funding round from investors co-led by Paradigm Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), as TheCoinRise reported.

Following the posting of a blog post by the project titled “A New Chapter,” which reenacted the performance of a project since its launch in early 2021 and outlined its objectives moving ahead, speculations of a possible token distribution to users of the related projects began to circulate on Twitter late Tuesday.

The team highlighted significant achievements over the last 12 months, including $17.4 billion in transaction volume, $24.5 million in income, and $1.1 billion in gas fee savings.

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.

👇

— Optimism (@Optimism) April 19, 2022

While Optimism didn’t specifically mention deploying or airdropping a native token, observers focused on the post’s final section, which details a new developmental stage that the community will lead:

“The network has grown by leaps and bounds, and it’s only getting better by the day. Our baby has learned to walk, and it’s nearly time to run. We’re nearing the end of a chapter and the beginning of the next––one driven by community ownership and governance.”

Because DeFi project Synthetix was the first protocol to start functioning with Optimism, many suggested that Synthetix (SNX) might be the token to keep an eye on for future airdrops.

Other popular projects on Optimism include Hop Protocol, Lyra Finance, and the Polynomial Protocol.