Optimistic Christmas

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and it's time for that Christmassy brew of hot web3 chocolate.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 🤝Optimism Year Review
• 🎁Airdrop opportunity
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

OPTIMISM IN 2022

It's Christmas. It's the merry time of the year. It's the time when being kind, and optimistic goes on #trending.

And we do expect you've spent a nice, cosy, lovely time with your close ones. And, got some nice gifts, of course. But in case you haven't... Don't worry.

We've got news about an airdrop for you. And airdrops = gifts. So let's make the best of this Christmas-themed newsletter's issue. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Now it's time for Optimism. It's always the right time for optimism, the outlook on life. But it's today when we're about to see how Optimism, the blockchain, performed in 2022.

So... What is Optimism?

It's a layer-2 blockchain. It's the product of Ethereum developers' minds. And it's built for Ethereum developers.

It provides speed, stability, and scalability for Ethereum-based apps. As they say themselves: 'Optimism takes everything you love about Ethereum and turbocharges it'.

Now let's see how optimistic 2022 has been for Optimism.

Optimism has enough reasons to smile, as it saw continuous growth of dApps launching on it, and more people using it. The on-chain number of transactions increased tenfold.

Here's a nicely-put chart about how their transactions have been steadily demanding more room:

Optimism's total On-Chain Value went through the roof as well. It increased almost 10x as well.

One year ago it stood at 116k ETH ($540M). Today it's 995k ETH ($1.3B). I mean, this year's been wild. In the worst ways. And yet we're seeing such gains. Bravo!

Optimism's ecosystem saw new big names being introduced into it. Such companies as Aave, the decentralized lending platform, and the NFT giant OpenSea joined the optimists.

Today their ecosystem contains over 100 dApps, with 54 new active ones being deployed in 2022 alone.

What is even more, Optimism can boast about one very successful thing that they implemented this year. They organized and delivered a mega-successful airdrop.

Known as OP Airdrop #1, the initiative rewarded early adopters and active users. Around 249,000 Optimists received Optimism's newly launched, native tokens.

And this allows us to make a nice transition into the more Christmas-like segment of today's newsletter. The airdrop, round 2.

OPTIMISM AIRDROP

So, the crypto Santa is back in town. And he wants you to participate in becoming eligible to claim this airdrop from Optimism.

It's been announced that 10M OP ($9.53M) will be thrown out of the sky for active and engaged users, and companies that make Optimism possible.

It's planned to take place in Q1 2023.

Known as 'Retroactive Public Goods Funding Round 2', this thing is gonna make people feel rewarded, appreciated, and... richer.

And that's not all. Optimism wants to boost their users' optimism not only with retroactive rewards for the most loyal optimists.

But also boost confidence in their project for the newcomers. And to achieve this... They're releasing a free NFT mint.

How do you get it?

Here are the instructions in their own words:

'To collect this special Genesis Subscriber NFT you just need to connect your wallet and provide an email address. Minting will be available until December 31st at 11:59 PM UTC.'

The NFT in question looks cool. A cool-looking bird. A Phoenix. An Optimistic phoenix.

Well, Optimism remains optimistic, and with the release of a free NFT, you can sum it up by saying, that in this context, 'NFT' could stand for 'No FUD Today'.

And... There's even more.

You can also try and participate in the Optimism Quest. It's an informative and useful way of exploring the Optimism app ecosystem.

It's more challenging and will require some ETH to be bridged to the Optimism network. Depending on your aspirations: costs will range from at least $40 in ETH up to $200 and beyond.

This newsletter is too short to present the entire guide on how to participate in it. So we prepared a guide for you, you can access it here.

BTW, if you'll obtain the Phoenix NFT and complete this Quest, most likely, you'll be granted a right to mint yet another, more valuable Optimist NFT.

Optimist NFT is a non-transferable unique avatar that will grace your profile in the Optimism ecosystem.

And future drops will already be handed out based on it. We'll see!

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• DEX Aggregator OpenOcean Launches Cross-Chain Swap Platform. Long live builders, innovators, creators.
• California DFPI Instructs MyConstant to Stop Providing Crypto-Related Services. No more California Dreamin for MyConstant.
• Tallinn-based Crypto Platform Paxful Removes Ether (ETH) from Its Marketplace. These Estonians woke up and chose to have beef with ETH.