LINK, the native token of the Ethereum-based decentralized oracle network Chainlink, has been diverging from the rest of the crypto market according to data highlighted by crypto market intelligence platform Santiment.
In a tweet, Santiment noted that LINK saw a mild 3% increase in price despite market-leading cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as most other cryptos.
Even more intriguing is data that shows that LINK has been seeing a sudden active address surge, which began approximately when the FTX fallout occurred. Since then, LINK address activity has soared to its highest level since May 2021, with over 8,000 unique addresses interacting per day in the last week.
“Chainlink jumped a mild +3% Monday despite Bitcoin & Ethereum falling. The bigger story is the LINK’s sudden active address surge, which began surging approximately when the FTX fallout occurred, & it is still up at one-year high levels,” the Santiment tweet said.
The price surge and wallet activity have also coincided with strongly positive social activity. Data from crypto social sentiments tracking platform LunarCrush, social mentions of LINK are up 58.2% in the last week.
Meanwhile, LINK has been building on the price momentum from the start of the week. Per the latest market data at the time of writing, LINK is up 3.23% in the last 24 hours, trading at $7.53.
Roll out of Chainlink Economics 2.0 projects fueling optimism?
The growing network activity and LINK price surge had their roots in recent ecosystem announcements made by the Chainlink blockchain developers.
In a Blog post, Chainlink Labs announced the launch of the Chainlink BUILD program as part of the Chainlink Economics 2.0 rollout. The program aims to align economic incentives between communities to help foster long-term success and has already onboarded its first ten projects.
“Chainlink BUILD aims to accelerate the growth of early-stage and established projects within the Chainlink ecosystem by providing enhanced access to Chainlink services and technical support in exchange for commitments of network fees and other incentives to Chainlink service providers, such as stakers,” the post said.
Another aspect of its Chainlink Economics 2.0 is the anticipated launch of LINK staking that will help to improve the security of the Oracle network in a trustless manner. The feature, which is expected before the end of the year, has seen LINK holders joining the waitlist to stake in their droves even as exchange LINK reserves decline per data from CryptoQuant.
