TVL surpasses Base Metis Andromeda again, showing its dark horse potential

Author: Climber, Golden Finance

On January 5, the OKX market showed that METIS rose to $99 and may enter the 100-yuan currency club at any time. And Metis Andromeda TVL also surpassed Base again after December 28 to become the third largest Ethereum Layer 2.

At the same time, the Goerli test network Cancun upgrade time is determined to be January 17, which will undoubtedly add benefits to the L2 track. However, competition has also intensified, and the battle for the top ten in L2 has become fierce. Except for the top two Arbitrum and Optimism, which are far ahead, there is not much TVL gap between the 3rd and 10th places.

Metis Andromeda was able to lead the star player Base twice, and its currency price increased by as much as 800% in less than three months. The growth rate of these two data alone has far exceeded that of similar opponents. At this stage, the network looks like a dark horse, but the second half of the game has just begun.

Rising Star

Compared with L2 networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base, Metis Andromeda is much less well-known, or even less well-known. zkSync, Starknet, Linea, etc., and project tokens. The project token METIS has not yet been listed on Binance.

But in recent times, Metis Andromeda seems to be cheating, with various data soaring. Seeing this situation, OKX also struck while the iron was hot and announced that it would launch METIS/USDT perpetual contracts and leveraged trading on December 28 last year.

January 5 , according to OKX market data, the price of METIS has risen to a maximum of $99, which is only one step away from $100.

As can be seen from its historical currency price chart, METIS has been rising from around US$11 since mid-October, and the increase has reached 800% in less than three months. Compared with other L2 network native tokens, there are almost none that come close to it.

The trend of Metis Andromeda TVL is equally fierce, not only surpassing Base twice in a row, but also entering a nearly 90° rising mode since December 18.

According to L2BEAT data, the current TVL of Metis Andromeda is approximately US$750 million, which is equivalent to that of Base and Manta Pacific. Almost in the same level range.

As can be seen from its TVL trend chart, Metis Andromeda’s TVL began to rise rapidly from around US$100 million on December 18. It rose to a maximum of US$773 million, an increase of 650% in just about half a month.

So who is Metis Andromeda? And why can it have such explosive growth in a short period of time?

As can be seen from the introduction of Metis Andromeda’s official website, this is an Ethereum Layer-2 Optimistic rollup platform. It was originally a fork of Optimism and was designed to combine the scalability of Optimistic Rollups with the security of ZKrollups. At the same time, it provides support for multiple interconnected chains, mainly focusing on supporting the easy creation of DACs (Decentralized Autonomous Companies).

The network launched the mainnet on November 19, 2021. It can be said that this is a Layer 2 project born in the last cycle.

The key data of its native token METIS is as follows:

• Circulation Volume: 4.57 million (45%)

• Maximum supply: 10 million

• Market value: US$478 million

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• FDV: US$947 million

• Target value: US$106 million

In addition, the project token economics are: the maximum supply is 10,000,000 tokens. The first 49.3% of the total METIS token supply was minted in 2021 for “cold launch, team, advisor and investor distribution, and ecosystem/community development.”

The remaining 50.7% of METIS tokens will be allocated to: 4.86% for community welfare (including mining), 10% for early Rangers mining, 3% for community development, 32.84% for Trading and related mining.

Behind the rise: a combination of internal and external factors

Metis Andromeda and its native token METIS can grow rapidly in a short period of time, except for the crypto market environment In addition to the improvement, it is inseparable from the project side's own efforts and the optimism of external capital.

First of all, the encryption industry macro narrative Cancun upgrade time has been determined to be beneficial to the entire L2 track. On January 5, @lightclients, a developer of the Geth team, posted that the 178th Ethereum core developer executive meeting ( ACDE) reconfirmed the Goerli testnet Cancun upgrade date as January 17th, and set January 30th and February 7th as the Sepolia testnet upgrade and Holesky testnet upgrade dates respectively.

As for the soaring price of its token METIS, some people believe that there are bookmakers or market makers behind it.

On January 1, on-chain data analyst @ai_9684xtpa monitored that in the past six days, 6 of the 11 addresses suspected of being METIS bookmakers/market makers have deposited 174,011 METIS into the trading platform. , worth US$14.33 million, with an average transfer price of US$82; this is the first transfer out behavior in the 11 months since the position was established. There are currently 5 addresses holding a total of 134,000 tokens.

On December 26 last year, the analyst monitored that 11 addresses transferred a total of 25,734 METIS from Coinbase that day, and the price of METIS rose from US$58 to US$80. All are closely related to the continued buying of these addresses.

In addition, these addresses hold a total of 301,000 METIS tokens, accounting for 6.6% of the total circulating tokens.

The same operation behavior was performed the day before, and it was already suspected to be the banker/market maker address. Referring to the previous on-chain transaction behavior of these addresses, we can find that the characteristics are: the tokens are all transferred out from Coinbase; the total amount transferred is around 20,000-30,000; the transfer time is concentrated in February and December, which corresponds to METIS’s two currency price peaks.

Another piece of evidence is the participation of the well-known market maker DWF Labs. On December 20, according to Spot On Chain monitoring, DWF Labs deposited 37,001 METIS into Gate.io at an average price of US$26.2. METIS has soared 43% in the past two days.

Although there is no conclusive proof that the rise of METIS is the behind-the-scenes manipulation of market makers, the Metis Andromeda project team is indeed actively working in 2023 to develop the project ecology.

On December 18 last year, the MetisDAO Foundation, the development organization for the Ethereum expansion solution MetisDAO, announced the establishment of an ecosystem development fund (Metis Ecosystem Development Fund) of approximately US$110 million.

The fund will allocate 4.6 million METIS tokens to support a variety of activities including sequencer mining, retroactive funding, and new project deployment.

Before the distribution of the Metis EDF fund, Metis has another important move, which is the official launch of its decentralized sequencer (sequencer) expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2024.

Metis will become the first OP rollup to decentralize its sequencer. Some believe that this move will further improve the efficiency and transparency of its network and bring new features to the Metis ecosystem. Development Opportunities.

The sequencer is a key component of the second layer network, responsible for packaging and delivering users' transactions to the main Ethereum blockchain. A decentralized sequencer will disperse power and reduce censorship and manipulation. The possibility of transactions while improving the stability and reliability of the network. This mechanism not only improves the efficiency of transactions, but is also an important link in ensuring network security.

In addition, in October last year, Metis passed the "switching data availability back to Ethereum" proposal, and all Metis transaction data was stored on the Ethereum mainnet; in September, Metis announced plans to switch from off- chain storage layer to its original Optimistic Rollup format and launch of the $5 million DeFi incentive program Metis Journey.

But the most important event of the month was Metis’ announcement of plans to become the first Layer 2 network to decentralize its orderer, eliminating the single point brought by a single orderer by launching a first-of-its-kind orderer pool. Risk of failure.

In early March last year, MetisDAO announced that Metis was developing a hybrid Rollup based on a combination of Optimistic Rollup (OPR) and Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP). This allows outside capital to see the enthusiasm and potential of its technological innovation.

In addition to the above-mentioned boosting factors, there is also a piece of tidbits of news that investors believe is a potential factor for the growth of Metis.

That is, Natalia Ameline, a member of the team behind the project, is the mother of Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum.

However, Metis has not received much financing since its establishment in 2018. Completed $1 million in angel and seed funding, and $3 million in Series A funding in 2021 alone.

Conclusion

As can be seen from the above analysis, hybrid Rollup, sorter, $100 million fund, market maker, and Buterin have become the The keywords of the project, the current rise in TVL and currency prices are obviously the gorgeous coat it has just put on, which is quite eye-catching.

Although the TVL is not much different from other star L2 players at this stage and has considerable dark horse potential, there is a big gap in the amount of financing, project depth, institutions behind it, and project operation and testing, and the above measures It's still only the early stages of planning. Therefore, investors should treat Metis Andromeda with caution and wait patiently for the actual progress of the network.