Return of the ETH

Here we go again! Ethereum is finally showing signs of strength against Bitcoin. The ETH/BTC ratio is up 4.5% to 0.053, and top L2s decided to come along for the ride, with Arbitrum gaining 19% and Optimism surging 26% on the day. It looks like rumors of Ethereum’s death have been greatly exaggerated…

Of course, broader crypto market conditions have been hostile to every alt lately, and Ether is no exception here, but this momentary burst of strength cleared the headroom that L2s needed to rally.

As for Arbitrum, it just announced that Orbit L3 developers could opt to use NEAR DA, a calldata storage solution approximately 8,000 times cheaper than storing the same amount of data on Ethereum. This partnership will allow Orbit devs to drastically reduce cost overheads and provide them with maximum optionality.

Optimism's OP has also been on the run since Gelato, in its capacity as a rollup-as-a-service platform, unveiled it would be launching an OP Stack chain for the alt-L1 Lisk, whose new L2 ecosystem will focus on RWAs and DePIN.

While it's unclear why Gelato price has failed to receive tailwinds from the news, and it's always unknown how impactful a headline event will be on the price of an asset, it appears that market participants have begun to reprice L2s generally and are most bullish on the two leading optimistic rollup solutions right now.