Ethereum bridges to the Optimism network are experiencing capacity issues as holders of token airdrop send their funds back to the Ethereum mainnet.
Hop Protocol, the largest Optimism-to-Ethereum bridge, reported on Discord that it has noticed a spiking in trading volume and that transactions moving back to the mainnet will be disabled until added USDC and ETH liquidation to release.
Users of the Synapse and Across Protocol have also reported Optimism’s slow or failed withdrawals. According to a developer support account in the Across Protocol server, the protocol has to handle an enormous number of transfers from Optimism toward the Ethereum mainnet.
“This is causing some short-term liquidity shortages on the destination chains, and some transfers can be delayed. Any delayed transfers should be finalized within 2 hours.”
Optimism is a Layer 2 network designed to help scale Ethereum. This protocol has gained $800 million on-chain value which saved $1 billion in gas fees for Ethereum users.
Yesterday, over 249,000 early Optimism users who met certain criteria received an airdrop of the network’s newly launched OP token. Although the Optimism team attempted to airdrop tokens to active and engaged network users over those looking to farm the airdrop, many holders are choosing to transfer their OP tokens to ETH and send their funds back to Ethereum mainnet.
As a result, OP price has seen a sharply hit. Right after the airdrop was unleashed, OP started trading at around $4.52, putting the token’s fully diluted value at over $19 billion. However, as many users received airdrop, the OP price plummeted. Currently, the token seems to be more stable and is trading at $1.17, dropping 70% from its launch.
The fall of OP’s price is predictable. Previously, ParaSwap and CoW Protocol, also saw a similar drop shortly after the launch of airdrop. Last year, Ethereum Name Service airdrop was able to recover from its initial drop in the short term. As demand in the crypto market is weakening, OP tokens will have an even tougher route ahead.
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