METIS, the native token of Ethereum‘s Layer 2 network Metis, has seen a significant price surge following social media buzz around the allocation of 4.6 million tokens for its ecosystem development fund. This has drawn increased investor attention to the token and related projects within the Metis ecosystem, with some projects experiencing over 100% increases in their token prices.
According to CoinMarketCap, METIS has risen by up to 50% in the last 24 hours, pushing its 30-day gain to over 240%. The altcoin’s trading volume has skyrocketed from just $2 million at the beginning of December to $50 million today.
The MetisDAO Foundation, responsible for Metis’ development, announced earlier this month that $360 million worth of METIS, totaling 4.6 million tokens, was allocated to the Ecosystem Development Fund (EDF) to boost development, liquidity, activity, and adoption within the Metis ecosystem.
Payments from the EDF are expected to commence in the first quarter of 2024, following the launch of Metis’ decentralized sequencer or the technology that distributes nodes processing transactions worldwide. Users will aim to earn a share of these rewards by utilizing applications built on the Metis network. This has reportedly led to the value of assets locked in Metis ecosystem projects rising from just under $100 million last week to over $500 million.
Metis is part of a group of Layer 2 scaling protocols that enable users to conduct transactions on the Ethereum blockchain with faster and cheaper transaction fees, but only through its own ecosystem projects and tools.
Furthermore, last week saw the token prices of several projects within the Metis ecosystem more than double. Maia’s MAIA token increased by 97%, and the swap protocol Hermes’ HERMES token jumped by 140%. Annual rewards for popular liquidity pools offered for HERMES and MATIS have risen to 200%, with riskier trading pairs offering rewards up to 350%. The decentralized perpetual trading protocol Tethys also saw its 24-hour trading volume exceed $18 million, previously averaging under $10 million, leading to a price surge of over 60% for its TETHYS token.