How did the night that was supposed to belong to Optimism go wrong?

Author: Azuma, ODAILY Planet Daily

In the early hours of today, the highly anticipated Optimism officially opened the airdrop claim for its native token OP.

As the first project among the "Big Four Layer 2" to issue a token, the market has always had very high expectations for Optimism. Compared to the valuations of other Layer 1 projects, OP was called by some KOLs to reach high prices of 10 USD or even 20 USD before circulation, with off-market prices also being quoted at 3 - 5 USD.

However, the story did not unfold according to the script set by market sentiment ------ since OP started circulating, its price has been on a downward trend, and as of the time of writing, it is reported at 1.93 USDT on OKX.

So, how did the story go wrong? Based on the developments of the evening, we believe this is a significant failure of marketing strategy. Specifically, there are three main failures.

First, there was a rush by scientists. Since Optimism had publicly tested the token contract several days prior, many scientists had already interacted directly with the contract before the airdrop claim officially opened, obtaining the airdrop first and selling it when the price was expected to be high.

Second, there was insufficient preparation for the access pressure. With the opening of the airdrop claim, Optimism experienced a peak in traffic in a short period, and the high load caused severe delays in the Optimism mainnet and remote procedure calls (RPC), resulting in most ordinary users still being unable to complete the claim through the front end, watching the price drop step by step, leading to the sentiment of "claim early, run early, and be free early."

Additionally, as Optimism, as a Layer 2, primarily focuses on the concept of scalability, the negative impact caused by the mainnet's delays is likely to be more severe than expected. Some frustrated users even questioned, "What’s the use of this Layer 2?" However, it should be noted that the delays here are more due to RPC overload rather than actual network performance.

Third, the expectation of the so-called "50 million USD liquidity pool" fell through. In previous tests, Optimism had injected 50 million USD of USDC into OP's liquidity pool, and at that time, there were still 20 million OP in the pool, leading the market to interpret that the opening price of OP would be 2.5 USD.

Then, after the test, Optimism withdrew this 50 million USDC, and after OP officially circulated, it did not add liquidity for market making again. As of 10:30, the OP/USDC liquidity pool on Uniswap was "only" 780,000 USD. Although Optimism never promised to provide this 50 million USDC, this action inevitably led to a disappointment in market expectations, undermining investor confidence.

As a result of the combined impact of the above "incidents," market expectations for OP have also declined, even gradually leading to FUD, ultimately steering what should have been a celebration for Optimism in a completely different direction.

Of course, this is just the story of the few hours after OP's circulation. Since exchanges like Binance have not yet opened trading for OP, how the market price of OP will move subsequently remains uncertain. Furthermore, in the current environment, the reasonableness of the early high valuation of OP by a small number of people is also open to debate. However, based on today’s opening situation, it is difficult to give Optimism's performance a passing grade.