Arbitrum’s ARB, Polygon’s MATIC Lead Gains as Ethereum’s Dencun Upgrade Goes Live

• Layer 2 cryptocurrencies provided a mixed performance as the Ethereum blockchain’s Decncun upgrade went live.

• Polygon, Arbitrum and Metis led gains while Immutable X and Celo declined.

Cryptocurrencies adjacent to the Ethereum network offered a mixed performance on Wednesday as the blockchain’s much-anticipated Dencun upgrade went live, enabling cheaper transactions on layer-2 (L2) protocols.

Native tokens of Polygon (MATIC), Arbitrum (ARB) and Metis (METIS) added 8%-10% before the upgrade, retracing some of the advance by the time the upgrade kicked in at 13:55 UTC. MATIC, ARB and METIS were still up 6%-7% over the past 24 hours, vastly outperforming the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index‘s (CD20) 0.7% gain.

Optimism (OP) also rallied nearly 10%, but dropped more than its rivals ahead of Dencun and was up less than 2% on the day. Gaming-focused L2 Immutable X (IMX) ended a short-lived advance to decline 6%. Celo (CELO) slid 7% while the Ethereum blockchain’s native token, ether (ETH), was little changed just below $4,000.

Dencun, considered the biggest milestone for the ecosystem in almost a year, introduced a new way of storing data on the notoriously congested blockchain. The change was forecast to cut transaction costs on L2 networks to a few cents, and expected to spur activity and attract more applications.

While ETH and layer-2 tokens performed well over the weeks leading up to Dencun, QCP Capital noted that ether could see a correction as anticipation for the upgrade passes and diminishing probability of a spot ether ETF being approved in the U.S. in the near future. A correction in crypto markets is often seen as a decline of at least 10%.