A Mysterious A16z Tweet Sparked a Rally in Crypto Project Optimism's OP Token
The tweet spurred speculation that the notable venture capital firm could launch its own Optimism-based layer 2 blockchain. A16z crypto’s CTO tweeted: “not an L2.”
Apr 18, 2023 at 9:17 p.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/SSSN2JHOQRCRJK45R3VAARYWGQ.jpg)
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The native token of the Optimism blockchain, OP, rallied after an engineer at the crypto arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) tweeted out a picture of an orange circle, accompanied by “coming soon.”
The color of the circle in the tweet matched that commonly associated with the a16z logo. Earlier this year, Coinbase teased the impending announcement of its Optimism-backed layer 2 network – called Base – by first tweeting out a blue circle.
The similarity of the images led to trader speculation that a16z may have plans to launch its own layer 2 blockchain, sending the OP token about 3% higher.
But Eddy Lazzarin, the chief technology officer of a16z crypto, subsequently tweeted “not an L2,” apparently denying that possibility.
A16z and Paradigm co-led a $150 million funding round for Optimism in March 2022, which valued the Ethereum scaling solution at $1.65 billion.
A16z declined to comment on the speculation when contacted by CoinDesk.
Update (April 18, 2023, 21:23 UTC): Adds tweet from a16z CTO saying it's "not an L2."
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Brandy covered crypto-related venture capital deals for CoinDesk.