Optimism [OP] NFTs may play a key role in the network’s revival, here’s how

• Optimism’s NFTs drove large amounts of activity to Optimism.
• Interest in OP declined, while network dApps underperformed.

The Optimism [OP] protocol hasn’t been having a great run lately. With Arbitrum [ARB] capturing a large amount of market share, and new entrants such as StarkNet and zkSync Era crowding the L2 space, the future of Optimism has looked bleak for quite some time.

Realistic or not, here’s OP’s market cap in BTC’s terms

There’s still some hope for OP

However, recently, there was a massive surge in interest in Optimism NFTs. According to Artemis’ data, the week-on-week activity on Optimism surged by 522.87%, which was driven by NFTs on the protocol.

Due to this spike in activity, the fees generated by Optimism increased from 61.39 ETH to 117.12 ETH, according to Dune Analytics’ data. There was also a spike observed in the protocol’s overall gas usage.

This spike in activity on the network wasn’t momentary, either. Data indicated the retention rate amongst active addresses on Optimism increased during this period.

Source: Dune Analytics

On the other hand, Optimism was also gaining popularity on the social front. Lunar Crush’s data showed that the number of social engagements for the protocol increased by 82.2% over the last three months. Additionally, the number of social mentions made towards Optimism spiked by 448.5%.

Despite the spike in activity, the weighted sentiment around Optimism remained negative. This suggested that Optimism still had a long way to go to sway public opinion in the protocol’s favor.

Source: Santiment

In terms of the DeFi market, Optimism’s dApps weren’t doing particularly well. One of the most popular dApps on the Optimism network, Synthetix, witnessed a large decline in interest.

This was showcased by the declining number of unique active wallets on the network, which fell by 13.12% in the last week. Subsequently, the volume of transactions on Optimism fell drastically.

Source: Dapp Radar

The OP token wasn’t seeing green either. Since testing the $2.35 resistance level on 26 April, the price of OP fell by 28.91%.

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A look at the daily charts revealed that OP’s RSI increased over the last few days, and reached 47.64 at press time. Thus, tyhe token could see bullish momentum ahead.

However, the RSI value of 47.64 at press time was still below the overbought threshold of 70, indicating that there might still be room for further price appreciation.

Source: Trading View