MATIC Surges 10% as Polygon’s 2.0 Upgrade Draws Closer

MATIC, the native token of Ethereum scaling solution Polygon, has jumped 10% from Monday’s low of $0.67 as traders anticipate the upcoming Polygon 2.0 upgrade.

The crypto is currently changing hands at $0.73 following a 62% increase in daily volume on Tuesday, with $500 million being traded over the past 24-hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Polygon revealed plans for its 2.0 version last month with aims of creating “the value layer of the internet.” It also said that it will transition to greater community governance of the protocol and treasury in a blog post.

Matic’s aggregated open interest, which is a metric used to assess the nominal value of open derivatives positions, has experienced an even larger uptick over the past 24-hours, rising from $109 million to $160 million, or 47%, according to Coinalyze. That big jump suggests that the rally is being backed with leverage.

It’s worth noting that highly-anticipated news events like upgrades can cause volatile price action as an imbalance of leveraged positions have the potential to get squeezed after the event takes place, with astute traders look to capitalize on unsustainable levels of optimism. Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade was an example of this, with prices rising by 16% in the lead-up to the event before returning to parity less than a week later.