Cody McGrath 
Balancer, an automated market maker (AMM) and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol, has gone live on Optimism, Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solution.
Balancer deployed optimism in collaboration with Beethoven X, a decentralized investment platform on the Fantom Network that forked from Balancer v2.
Both teams are claimed to have worked together to create a decentralized exchange that will compete in the Optimism ecosystem.
According to Balancer Labs CEO Fernando Martinelli, the Optimism deployment illustrates the company’s view that layer-2 scaling solutions will be beneficial in decreasing transaction prices and network congestion.
Optimism is a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum that aims to make transactions faster and cheaper. Optimistic Rollups, a scaling method that runs in parallel with the main Ethereum chain, is supposed to support all decentralized apps on Ethereum.
According to industry data, Optimism currently has approximately $320 million in total value locked (TVL) on its chain from 38 projects. In late April, its TVL surpassed $510 million. In terms of overall network value, it is now ranked 19th.
The number of projects launched on Optimism has risen dramatically in recent months, owing in part to expectations that the network might airdrop new tokens.
Users aiming to position themselves for the OP governance token airdrop, which will occur in many phases, have noticed an increased demand for Optimism. According to reports, almost 250,000 addresses are eligible for the airdrop.