In the Eastern Eight Time Zone this week, Zakk Wang, the product head of OKX Wallet, publicly announced the three-phase development plan for X Layer, emphasizing that the route of "technology → ecology → incentives" has progressed to the third phase. This is not just a simple product launch, but a long-term battle signal centered around "how exchange public chains can break through in the tide of Ethereum L2." The official side throws out the technical commitment of "Gas is almost free" while frequently mentioning the commercial vision of "payment infrastructure," creating a tension between performance, cost, and sustainable returns. Questions arise: why does OKX still choose to heavily invest in X Layer and define it as "an important cornerstone for OKX Web3's continuous advancement" amidst the backdrop of intensified competition in Ethereum L2 and the general cooling of exchange public chains?
The Dilemma of Exchange Public Chains: Narrowing Paths to High Valuation
● The cooling process of public chain narratives: In recent years, the trajectory from mainstream exchanges launching self-built public chains to a gradual cooling has become quite clear. Early on, relying on platform tokens to boost valuation, airdrops, and mining activities brought about a brief prosperity, but users and developers ultimately returned to mainstream public chains like Ethereum mainnet and leading L2s. The result is that many exchange public chains remain stuck in a stage of "assets have prices, but scenarios lack stickiness," forming an awkward ecology of "having coins but no use," where on-chain life has not truly taken shape.
● Structural contradictions of self-built chains: For exchanges, self-built public chains were initially intended to reduce settlement and on-chain costs while firmly grasping traffic entry and the clearing layer. However, the willingness to migrate assets is limited, and developers' mindsets have long been locked by Ethereum and its L2s, making these chains easily devolve into "island ecologies" centered around a single platform. On-chain assets struggle to spill over, and cross-chain interoperability lacks sufficient demand, bearing the burden of infrastructure investment while failing to gain matching external network effects.
● OKX's business pressure and shift: As traditional CEX businesses like matching and derivatives gradually approach their ceilings, OKX needs to find new growth curves. Wallet and its own chain have become key carriers for capturing incremental stories, capable of accommodating the on-chaining of existing users while extending to payment and application scenarios. It is against this backdrop that Zakk Wang brought the statement "X Layer is an important cornerstone for OKX Web3's continuous advancement" to the forefront, attempting to reshape OKX's coordinates in the Web3 world with a "public chain + wallet" route.
From Technology to Ecology: The Three Acts of X Layer
● Official design of the three-phase path: According to OKX's official statement, the construction of X Layer is broken down into three steps: "technology → ecology → incentives." The first step emphasizes the availability of underlying performance, transaction costs, and development environment, first ensuring "the road is well paved"; the second step supports applications and partners to bring real business into play, getting "the car on the road"; the third step is supplemented by funding incentives and activity exposure to amplify network effects. Currently, the official stance claims that it has progressed to the third phase, indicating that, in internal assessments, the underlying capabilities and basic ecology have taken shape.
● Who's cost is changed by "almost zero Gas": On this path, "Gas is almost free" is a repeatedly highlighted point. For developers, this means that the marginal costs of contract interactions and large-scale user operations are further compressed, allowing for bolder designs of high-frequency calling gameplay; for end users, the costs of actions like transfers, in-game interactions, and NFT operations are reduced to "below the perception threshold," making the user experience closer to Web2. However, historical experience shows that free does not automatically equate to real demand; what truly determines the survival of scenarios is still the quality of content and sustainable revenue models.
● Continuous emphasis on the signals behind the roadmap: Although the official claims that X Layer has entered the incentive phase, Zakk Wang continues to frequently reiterate the three-phase route, which itself is a form of narrative management. On one hand, this proves the rationality of continued investment internally, indicating that the project is not burning money disorderly but is advancing according to established milestones; on the other hand, externally, it aims to shape the impression that "the foundation is ready, the ecology is on the way, and funding is about to amplify," encouraging developers and potential partners to view the current moment as an entry window rather than the end of an experimental project.
Zero Gas and Payment Blueprint: The Fork Between Ideal and Implementation
● The "zero Gas" world from the user's perspective: If we concretize the promise of "almost zero Gas," we can imagine a chain targeting high-frequency microtransactions: small tips, cross-border micropayments, in-game item sales, NFT likes and transfers, all with costs low enough to be negligible. For Web2 users who are not yet accustomed to on-chain operations, this experience is closer to traditional internet applications, eliminating the need to repeatedly confirm Gas prices or worry about costs for a single operation, lowering the psychological barrier to transitioning from CEX to on-chain applications.
● From free technology to payment infrastructure: However, for OKX, "technically almost free" is only the first half of the sentence; the second half is how to translate it into a commercial story of "payment infrastructure." Ideally, OKX holds the entry point through Wallet, allowing users to complete on-chain payments within the wallet, seamlessly connecting to financial, trading, and derivatives products within CEX, forming a closed loop from C-end payments to platform financial services. X Layer plays the role of a "low-cost, high-frequency settlement layer," providing a scalable technical foundation for the entire closed loop.
● Real challenges beyond cost advantages: The problem is that the current official statements only provide directional expressions like "incentive funds will be implemented" and "plans to promote project implementation through hackathons," without disclosing the scale of incentives, merchant lists, or specific implementation scenarios. For users and merchants, mere cost reductions are insufficient to change behavior; real decisions often depend on whether payment scenarios are concentrated, whether funds flow in and out smoothly, and whether security and compliance are guaranteed. This means X Layer must be deeply bound to OKX's existing massive traffic, migrating the habit of "you are already using OKX" to "you naturally use X Layer for payments" to have a chance to break through the cognitive ceiling.
Incentive Funds and Hackathons: The Test of Traffic Sugar's Aftermath
● Declarative rather than definitive incentive phase: According to OKX's official statement, X Layer has entered the "incentive" third phase, and will "implement incentive funds" and "plan to promote project implementation through hackathons." However, in the currently available information, there has been no disclosure regarding the scale of the incentive fund, distribution rhythm, or timeline, nor specific arrangements for the cities and times of hackathons. This gives this phase a clear external declaration color—telling the market "we will give money, we will hold events," rather than immediately providing clear revenue expectations.
● The double-edged sword effect of hackathons: In past cases of public chain competition, hackathons have indeed been a common means to quickly stack project numbers and create topics. In the short term, the number of on-chain GitHub repositories, demo projects, and demo day press releases will soar, but if there is a lack of follow-up resources, user flow, and commercialization paths, many projects may quickly fall silent within a few months after the competition, becoming "ecological projects" that only appear in PPTs. For X Layer, hackathons are more like a testing platform: whether the awarded projects can truly be integrated into OKX Wallet's traffic system will determine its long-term reputation.
● Opportunity cost calculation for developers: In the absence of publicly disclosed incentive details, developers face an opportunity cost calculation: should they treat X Layer as a channel for obtaining short-term bonuses and exposure, or bet on OKX's ability to continuously bring in real users on the payment and wallet side? If the latter holds, early projects may gain "first-mover accumulation"; if the former is closer to reality, then participation motivation will lean more towards arbitrage. To change this expectation, X Layer must provide clear traffic commitments and product integration plans beyond just "the third phase has begun" slogans.
Industry Synchronization Mirror: Reference Systems of Ethereum, Gate, and Rainbow
● Contrast between security foresight and cost narrative: At the same time that OKX emphasizes "almost free Gas," news of the Ethereum Foundation forming a post-quantum team has also spread within the industry. This move points more towards long-term issues of future computing power patterns and on-chain security, focusing attention on "how to ensure security and credibility decades from now." Compared to the L2 narrative centered on "low cost," this forward-looking security investment forms a stark contrast—main chains talk about "long-term security and stability," while L2s discuss "current performance and cost." For X Layer to find its place, it needs to complement its cost advantages with signals of long-term reliability.
● Funds still revolve around Bitcoin and yield products: Meanwhile, Gate's BTC mining product pledge volume has reached a new high, reflecting that funds are still largely focused on Bitcoin and yield products. For many exchanges, "how to allow users to earn more on the platform" remains the most direct and effective story, far surpassing "the long-term construction of public chain ecology." This also explains why many platforms choose to continue strengthening financial management and mining products while shrinking resources for self-built public chains. In this context, OKX's continued bet on X Layer is akin to doubling down on a longer cycle with more uncertain returns.
● The trend of deep binding between wallets and public chains: On the other side of the industry, the news that Rainbow Wallet will launch its token TGE reflects that the interests between wallet products and public chains are deepening. Wallets are transforming from mere "tools" into "entry applications with tokens," naturally entangled with the traffic, assets, and governance of the underlying chains. For OKX, the combination of Wallet + X Layer also signifies this binding: the wallet serves as the front-end touchpoint, while the public chain acts as the back-end settlement and application platform, together carrying the commercial and tokenization imagination space. This makes X Layer no longer an isolated technical project but a core module embedded in the entire OKX Web3 strategy.
Can the Next Big Bet of Exchange Public Chains Turn the Tide?
The core contradiction of X Layer has become very clear: on one end is the technical promise of "almost zero Gas" and the upcoming incentive funds, aimed at attracting the attention of developers and early users; on the other end is OKX's massive existing user base and trading business, which must be truly migrated on-chain to form a high-frequency, daily usage closed loop. If the latter cannot be achieved, no amount of incentives may just be short-lived fireworks; only when Wallet users are accustomed to completing payments, interactions, and asset management on X Layer can this chain be qualified as OKX's "cornerstone" rather than a "testing ground."
For observers, the next six months to a year can focus on several key indicators: first, the real active user scale and retention on the X Layer chain, rather than the peak of a single event; second, the number of implemented payment scenarios, especially use cases that connect with products within the OKX ecosystem; third, the survival rate of projects incubated through activities like hackathons, and the degree of resource tilt they receive on Wallet and trading ends; fourth, the depth of integration between on-chain behavior and OKX's trading business, such as whether "on-chain behavior—trading rights" closed-loop designs emerge.
In the larger industry picture, on one side is the Ethereum Foundation betting on post-quantum security, while on the other side, exchanges continue to attract funds around Bitcoin mining and yield products, and wallet products accelerate interest binding through TGE. X Layer stands at the intersection of these narratives, serving as a key chip for OKX to extend the story cycle and hedge against the ceiling of centralized trading business, as well as the latest litmus test for verifying whether "exchange public chains can turn the tide." The real answer will not come from a single event or incentive program, but rather from whether this chain with almost zero Gas can grow a self-circulating daily life in real user behavior.
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