The Optimism Protocol native token, OP, saw an unexpected surge recently, after Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)’s engineering team tweeted an image of an orange circle with the phrase “coming soon”. This reportedly caused excitement within cryptocurrency traders as the orange circle was similar to a16z’s own logo color, leading to the speculation that the venture capital firm might launch its own layer 2 blockchain network. As a result, OP price rose by 3% in the hours respective to the tweet.

Coinbase had also generated hype earlier this year when it made an announcement to launch its own layer 2 blockchain, Base, with the pictured blue circle. Layer 2 networks allow much faster transactions and scalability of blockchain-based projects. After the a16z tweet, their CTO Eddy LAZZARIN quickly clarified on the platform, saying “not L2”, putting an end to the speculation.

a16z and Paradigm led an optimistic fundraising round worth $150 million in March 2022, investing in the Ethereum scaling solution Optimism. This enabled the project to reach a $1.65 billion market value. The native token of the Optimism blockchain, OP, has been trading on many major exchanges, such as KuCoin and IDEX, for a few months now.

The recent stir created by a16z might prove to be of immense significance in this regard, as the speculation brought attention to the newly-launched token, OP. Despite the CTO’s tweet and subsequent denial of the recent claims, it is essential to note that the rise in price for the OP token has enabled the project to gain wider exposure. If a16z does decide to launch a layer 2 blockchain, however, this will undoubtedly be a massive growth opportunity for Optimism in the crypto and blockchain space.



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