Can Optimism [OP] repeat its 9 February performance in 2023? Analyzing…

• Optimism experienced a sudden and significant increase in network growth and active addresses on 9 February.
• The metrics have since collapsed, and OP has been moving differently.

On 9 February, Optimism [OP] experienced a sudden and dramatic increase in its network growth and the number of active addresses. This trend first appeared to be the new norm for the network. However, a significant correction has occurred, and OP appears to be uncoupled from these indicators.

Read Optimism’s [OP] Price Prediction 2023-24

Optimism’s not-so-optimistic metrics

According to data compiled by Santiment, on 9 February, the network growth and active addresses metrics experienced a dramatic increase. There were over 314,000 active addresses, and the network growth metric had over 33,000.

? Leading Layer 2 (L2) network #Optimism has grown in userbase in 2023. However, its price hasn't shown much decoupling from the #altcoin pack. Our latest community insight discusses the 95% drop in network growth since early February. https://t.co/dvkABTIQKx pic.twitter.com/kVxTwfs8bT

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) March 21, 2023

These metrics are noteworthy because, after 9 February, they completely collapsed. As of this writing, there were over 17,000 active addresses, but the network had only grown by 5,533, a drop of over 200%.

On 9 February, the Optimism Network surprised users by AirDropping 11.7 million governance tokens to almost 300,000 wallets. Its biggest rival is Arbitrum [ARB], also an Ethereum [ETH] layer 2. Still, unlike Optimism, it only had a token recently, so the AirDrop was an attempt to get an advantage over it. So, how well has it fared in that regard?

Comparing Optimism and Arbitrum through TVL

Although Optimism competes with other L2 networks like Polygon [MATIC], Arbitrum has been the one to which it has been most frequently compared. The Total Value Locked (TVL) of Optimism and Arbitrum per Defi Llama revealed a recent increase in both. Optimism had a TVL of approximately $984 million at the time of writing, whereas Arbitrum had a TVL of around $2 billion.

The Arbitrum network has recently been edging Optimism in some indicators, including TVL. The spike in traffic that Arbitrum had been experiencing and the decline that Optimism had been experiencing could be attributed to the recent AirDrop announcement that Arbitrum made.

Price move on a daily timeframe

Though OP AirDropped on 9 February, it also had its greatest one-day loss of the year on the date. On a daily timeframe, it lost over 13% of its worth. As of this writing, it had dropped over 2%, selling at around $2.58.

Source: TradingView

How much are 1,10,100 OPs worth today?

The location from where it plummeted is its resistance level at roughly $2.8 and $3.0. Also, OP has avoided falling below the neutral line on the Relative Strength Index line.

Unless there are events like the one on February 9, Optimism may not see such excellent metrics again. Yet, as the L2 race heats up, standout partnerships and innovations may draw greater attention to the network and favorably impact it.