Polygon (MATIC) Vs. Optimism (OP) - Which One To Buy?

By Cryptofab | Cointune | 5 Aug 2022

Optimism (OP) token price has inceased by 258% in the last 30 days, whereas Polygon (MATIC) has increased by 80%. The reasons can be:

The Crypto market rebound, mostly driven by Bitcoin (BTC) technical rebound, which might be only temporary.
The upcoming Ethereum (ETH) Merge which had a positive impact on all the tokens linked to ETH, e.g. OP & MATIC.
In the specific case of the OP token, the upcoming Bedrock upgrade, which is supposed to reduce the gas fees further.

Furthermore, we can also compare the TVL (Total Value Locked) on Polygon and Optimism chains by using Defillama:

Optimism (OP) TVL has inceased in the last 30 days from $280m to $942m.
Polygon (MATIC) TVL has increased in the last 30 days from $1.46b to $1.72b.

Therefore, Optimism TVL is growing currently much faster than on most of the other chains.

Does it mean you should swap your MATIC for OP... Or ETH?

Short answer: no, or not immediately, because OP token price has already pumped a lot, and hence a price correction has started.

Longer answer: it might make sense to start accumulating OP token, slowly but surely, since Optimism could progressively replace Polygon for DeFi. Furthermore, Optimism and other Ethereum layer-2 chains offer now an excellent alternative to Polygon: You can easily withdraw ETH from centralized echanges, e.g., Binance, to Optimism or Arbitrum. As all these networks use ETH for gas fees, there will be more buying pressure for ETH than for MATIC.

Last but not least: MATIC has outperformed ETH in the last 90 days as shown on the graph below from coinlib.io:

Therefore, if you bought MATIC three months ago before the LUNA/UST and Celsius/3AC crashes, it could make sense to swap it now for ETH before these two curves above cross each other again.

In summary

MATIC and OP have both outperformed ETH recently. As Optimism TVL has increased significantly faster than Polygon TVL, the OP token looks bullish in the mid term. However, in the short term, the price correction may continue. In the meantime, ETH seems to be a safer asset, at least until the Merge.

Disclaimer: this article does not contain any financial advice. The information is provided for general informational and educational purposes only.

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