This week, the product head of OKX Wallet, Zakk Wang, publicly disclosed the X Layer three-phase construction plan and revealed that it has now entered the third phase. According to public information, X Layer has made a commitment to an experience of "almost free Gas" in its technical roadmap, while planning to launch incentive funds and hackathons as ecological support tools, attempting to leverage cost advantages and financial support to attract the attention of developers and users. In parallel, the BTC staking volume on the Gate platform has risen to a new high of 2620.46 BTC, traditional game retailer GameStop has transferred 4710 BTC (approximately $422 million) to Coinbase, and gold has seen an annual increase of 64%, marking the largest rise since 1979, collectively painting a picture of capital migrating rapidly between on-chain, cross-platform, and traditional safe-haven assets. Against this backdrop, OKX is advancing its public chain not merely as a performance narrative but is compelled to find a new balance between "speed and cost" and "real applications and sustainable ecology."
From Centralization to the Cornerstone of Public Chains: Redesigning OKX's Identity
● Role Transformation Path: Zakk Wang placed “X Layer is an important cornerstone for OKX Web3's continuous progress” at the core of his public statement, indicating that OKX no longer sees itself merely as a centralized platform for matching orders but is attempting to build a complete infrastructure between wallets, chains, developer tools, and asset entry points. For an exchange, this represents a structural shift from "matching traffic" to "carrying traffic," with the public chain becoming the foundation of its Web3 strategy rather than a peripheral attempt.
● Historical Comparison Perspective: Looking back at the early days of exchanges building their own public chains, the main theme was often high TPS, high concurrency, and "frictionless" experience slogans. However, in the reality check years later, what truly remains are mostly a few asset bridges, DEXs, and speculative projects, with ecological diversity and long-term activity often questioned. The emergence of X Layer is naturally compared within this historical context: it needs to prove itself not just as another high-performance chain but as one that can solve the old problem of "performance first, ecology lagging."
● Pressure and Motivation of Timing: OKX's decision to prominently advance the X Layer three-phase plan at this time is closely related to the current market cycle and competitive landscape. On one hand, in a phase where large funds are reassessing on-chain and off-chain allocations, whoever can present a more complete infrastructure story first has a better chance of seizing the next increment; on the other hand, the years of accumulation by other leading platforms in public chains and ecosystems have objectively created competitive pressure on OKX, necessitating a clear phased plan and "cornerstone" positioning to demonstrate its determination.
● No Longer an Isolated New Chain: From the positioning of "X Layer as a cornerstone," it is not a new chain that can be viewed in isolation but rather a redefinition of OKX's own role and revenue structure. OKX needs to reduce its reliance on single matching revenue by accumulating on-chain assets, sharing transaction fees and MEV, and developing new businesses derived from wallet and cross-chain services, striving to become a "long-term habitat for assets and applications" on the public chain.
Almost Free Gas: The Costs and Benefits Behind the Performance Commitment
● Intuitive Attraction of Low Costs: For ordinary users, the most direct feeling of "almost free Gas" is that on-chain operations are no longer blocked by high transaction fees, allowing for more frequent attempts at DeFi, NFTs, games, and on-chain social interactions without hesitation over a few dollars of Gas. For developers, extremely low Gas means they can boldly design applications with high interaction frequency and batch execution logic without complex cost considerations for each call, reducing product trial-and-error costs and operational thresholds.
● Contrast with Ethereum Mainnet: The soaring Gas fees during high load on the Ethereum mainnet have been a longstanding issue, which has spurred fierce L2 track competition. In this context, X Layer anchors its experience in the direction of "almost free," directly differentiating itself at the most painful point for users—not by comparing specific TPS numbers with competitors but by using actual interaction costs and smoothness as selling points. However, there is currently no publicly detailed data on X Layer's specific performance metrics, and all specific TPS values cannot be inferred out of thin air.
● Data Gaps and Cognitive Boundaries: In the existing public materials, X Layer has not provided detailed metrics such as throughput and confirmation time, nor has it fully disclosed the underlying optimization mechanisms, which means that external evaluations of its "high performance" can only remain at the level of experience promises. For investors and developers, this information asymmetry means that they will need a longer time to base their assessments on actual on-chain performance rather than relying on single-point promotions or unverified technical data.
● Side Effects of Extremely Low Gas: Almost free Gas does not only provide positive incentives; it may also amplify issues such as spam transactions, wash trading, and bot spam, leading to increased noise in on-chain data and obscuring real user behavior signals. For participants relying on on-chain data for risk control, research, and asset pricing, this signal distortion can weaken their judgment of ecological health, posing challenges for how to filter ineffective interactions through incentive design and governance mechanisms to support truly valuable applications.
Incentive Funds and Hackathons: Building Ecological Frameworks with Money and Stories
● Planned Incentive Toolbox: According to current disclosures, X Layer will launch an ecological incentive fund and plan a hackathon, intending to attract developer attention through financial support and event mechanisms. However, key details such as specific amounts, distribution rules, timelines, and entry thresholds have not been publicly disclosed and cannot be speculated upon, only broadly viewed as a "resource arsenal for the startup phase," with its true effects awaiting subsequent implementation and observation.
● Cold Start Logic Driven by Funds: In the cold start phase of public chains, financial incentives are often an efficient means to facilitate the migration of development teams and existing projects, with TVL and active contract numbers easily rising during the subsidy period. However, while money can buy deployment and integration, it is challenging to automatically acquire "real users who will stay long-term." Once the marginal effects of subsidies decline, applications lacking sticky mechanisms often face the risk of dual withdrawals of traffic and funds.
● Lessons from Subsidy Wars: In past rounds of public chain subsidy wars, there have been many cases of TVL curves sharply increasing and then suddenly dropping, with short-term data looking impressive but failing to mask ecological "hollowness": users primarily engage in mining, withdrawing, and selling, while protocols sacrifice sustainability to compete for subsidies, leading projects to migrate from chain to chain and pool to pool. If X Layer follows the path of prioritizing "TVL rankings," it may fall into the same predicament; thus, how to direct funds and hackathon resources towards protocols with long-term value capture capabilities will determine whether this wave of incentives can lead to a more solid application layer.
● Synergistic Effects of Traffic Entry Points: Unlike many purely technical teams launching chains, OKX holds two key entry points aimed at existing users: the exchange main site and the OKX wallet. If the incentive plan can be linked with these two entry points, embedding on-chain applications directly into existing trading and asset management processes—such as recommending specific DApps, yield scenarios, or on-chain games as traffic spots for the wallet or main site—there is an opportunity to convert "users attracted by subsidies" into "users who genuinely use assets and services on-chain," allowing the incentives to break free from the mere data inflation trap.
On-Chain Expansion and Asset Migration: Shadows Cast by Gate and GameStop
● Gate's BTC Staking Hits New High: Beyond the narrative of X Layer, the BTC staking volume on the Gate platform has reached 2620.46 BTC, setting a new record, reflecting the exchange's desire to enhance asset retention and on-chain stickiness. Through the staking mechanism, the platform can encourage users to lock BTC long-term within its system, thereby increasing control over funds and reflecting a greater emphasis on the role of "long-term custody and on-chain services," rather than just high-frequency trading matching.
● GameStop's Large Transfer to Coinbase: Meanwhile, the traditional game retailer GameStop has transferred 4710 BTC (approximately $422 million) to Coinbase, showcasing the reality of large institutional or corporate funds migrating between platforms. Such migrations often arise from compliance needs, custody security assessments, or liquidity considerations, signaling to the industry that large on-chain assets are not passively remaining but are actively optimized across different service providers.
● OKX's Public Chain in the Same Coordinate System: Placing OKX's advancement of X Layer and the public chain's asset-bearing actions alongside Gate's BTC staking record and GameStop's transfer reveals that the dimensions of exchange competition are broadening—not just rankings on transaction volume but who can carry more on-chain assets and provide more integrated financial and application scenarios. For OKX, building a public chain extends the asset-bearing rights from the "account system" further into the "on-chain foundational layer."
● Insights for Users and Strategies: These capital migration behaviors suggest to ordinary users that asset security and trust should not be simplified to the data glamour of a single platform but should focus more on cross-platform allocation, compliant custody, and on-chain transparency. As more exchanges strengthen their public chain and custody capabilities, users may gradually split their funds across multiple platforms and on-chain assets to hedge against single-point risks; for platforms like OKX, whoever can create a secure and liquid asset habitat in this multi-platform, multi-chain game will gain an advantage in the next stage of competition.
Ethereum's Post-Quantum Bet and Gold's Surge: Two Moats of Security and Experience
● Ethereum's Post-Quantum Layout: In the field of underlying public chains, the news that Ethereum has formed a post-quantum cryptography team indicates that it is beginning to reinforce its security architecture in anticipation of potential future quantum computing threats. Such investments are often difficult to translate into visible user growth or fee income in the short term but build a firewall for long-term security and attack resistance, adding weight to Ethereum's narrative as "the global settlement layer."
● Security Moat vs. Experience Moat: Comparing Ethereum's post-quantum security investments with OKX's emphasis on "performance and experience" in X Layer reveals two different moat logics: the former secures the bottom-line safety line, providing a solid foundation for upper-layer applications and expansion plans; the latter seeks to expand the "traffic funnel" for users and developers by lowering costs and enhancing interaction smoothness. In the future multi-chain coexistence landscape, these two moats are not mutually exclusive but rather complement each other in the division of labor between foundational and application layers.
● Signals from Gold's 64% Annual Surge: On the traditional asset front, gold prices have increased by 64% over the past year, marking the largest annual rise since 1979. This extreme performance reflects a collective pursuit of safe-haven assets by global capital amid multiple uncertainties such as inflation, geopolitical tensions, and interest rate changes. While we will not delve into a technical analysis of the macro variables behind this, it is clear that safe-haven logic is reshaping the allocation of capital between risk assets and safe assets.
● The Dual Identity Game Period: As gold strengthens, blue-chip BTC circulates between different platforms and custodians, and exchanges accelerate public chain expansion while promoting performance narratives, crypto assets are in a tug-of-war between their dual identities as "safe-haven assets" and "new infrastructure." For OKX, X Layer is not just a tool for providing faster channels for speculation; it must also find its positioning within this dual identity: it needs to accommodate long-term assets seeking safety while providing sufficient technical flexibility and liquidity support for new applications and protocols.
A New Round of Ranking for Exchange Public Chains Has Just Begun
X Layer, with "almost free Gas" as its front-end experience slogan, combined with standardized tools like incentive funds and hackathons, forms the basic combination for the cold start of the OKX public chain. According to public information, it is currently only in the early stages of the third phase of its three-phase plan, and many key details have yet to surface, meaning that any judgments made at this time are more like preliminary results rather than final outcomes. In the short term, evaluating success based on TVL spikes, subsidy scales, or single activity metrics is likely to overlook a core issue: whether this chain can cultivate a community of applications and developers that are truly driven by user demand and do not rely on subsidies.
Several directions worth paying attention to next include: how X Layer will collaborate with the Ethereum ecosystem, aligning with mainstream foundational standards in security and compliance; whether OKX will invest in long-term security issues like post-quantum, rather than only betting on the experience dimension; and the pace at which users migrate from centralized products to on-chain native applications—whether it is driven by incentives or occurs naturally due to actual usage value. In a broader context, as traditional safe-haven assets like gold strengthen and global regulatory frameworks remain uncertain, which public chain can truly grow into a "mother port" for cross-platform assets beyond the "entry layer" of exchanges remains an unanswered suspense. The emergence of X Layer is merely the starting whistle for this new round of ranking for exchange public chains.
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