What's Driving Token Prices? March 1, 2023

OP/COIN (+1%/+0.3%) - Coinbase announced last week it would be launching Base, its Ethereum Layer 2 built using the technology stack developed by Optimism for rollups on Ethereum. The aim, many believe, of the new L2 is to promote the growth of digital asset usage on-chain with Coinbase as the onramp for these users and activity. Optimism will also benefit from the launch as they may likely receive some of the fees that Base collects from user payments. OP initially went up 25% on the announcement but has since retraced and is up just 1% for the week.
FXS (+18%) - Last week, decentralized stablecoin issuer, Frax Finance, saw a vote pass to move the project’s stablecoin from partially-dollar backed, to fully dollar-backed. Currently, Frax’s stablecoin FRAX is collateralized with a combination of USDC and the FXS governance token (FXS contributed to create FRAX would be burned). The move comes as the regulatory environment for stablecoins is murkier and murkier.
SNX (+22%) - Decentralized derivative platform, Synthetix, launched its V3 upgrade on mainnet last week. The primary innovation in V3 is differentiated debt pools that allow users to customize their exposure (versus one unified debt pool where stakers assume exposure to all assets). The protocol will also support multi-collateral staking (versus only SNX today) which could increase volumes because other types of collateral are less volatile than SNX but will decrease the utility of the SNX token.

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