Optimism (OP) just surged more than 17% in the past 24 hours, leaving other major cryptocurrencies behind as the token shot up and became the third-largest gainer of the day.
The token's market cap climbed above $260 million, with network upgrades and major ecosystem developments driving this momentum. At the heart of this rally is Uniswap's Unichain moving to OP Enterprise, a move that has sparked a week full of new launches across the OP ecosystem.
The chain made stablecoin deposits possible when USDT and USDC went live on AAVE's mobile app. Sonium then announced a new platform focused on tokenized intellectual property, while EtherFi card holders reached 120,000. These announcements contributed to growing network activity.
The catalyst came when the Binance hacker moved 44.23 million OP tokens from a black-hat address to a new wallet. The tokens were valued at $5.37 million at the time of the transfer. Binance responded by starting to buy back the stolen assets through both on-exchange and over-the-counter channels.
This recovery effort triggered a buying surge as spot traders started purchasing OP tokens, forcing short sellers to close their positions. While spot trading saw significant volume, futures positions barely changed as Open Interest (OI) rose by just 3%.
Transaction activity provided the most striking confirmation of this rally. Token Terminal data shows the network's transaction count jumped from 1 million to 1.20 million, a 20% increase. On a weekly basis, the total reached 8.1 million transactions, with trading activity averaging one million per day.
At the time of writing, OP broke through a slanting trendline and horizontal resistance at $0.11. However, bulls are now struggling to keep the price above this crucial level as the altcoin retests the breakout point. The Bull Bear Power (BBP) indicator turned green but saw a reduction in buyer momentum.
Additionally, the Money Flow Index (MFI) sits at 54.97, just around the neutral level, which reinforces this cautious outlook. The structural analysis on the 4-hour chart remains bullish after the breakout.
OP's potential to reach $0.16 now hinges on maintaining the current level above $0.11. However, traders should be aware of the significant hurdle at $0.135. If the altcoin loses the $0.11 support level, it could drop to $0.10 or even further to the low of $0.0943.