Author: Frank, PANews
On August 13, OKX released an upgrade announcement that triggered a violent market reaction, with OKB skyrocketing from $46 to a peak of $142.88 in a short period, achieving a maximum increase of 200% within an hour. The reason for such a drastic market response is that this announcement was not just a technical upgrade but more like a well-considered strategic shift. PANews conducts an in-depth analysis of the content behind this announcement to interpret the multifaceted impacts that OKX's layout may bring.
In this announcement, the key content can be briefly summarized into the following points:
Reshaping the OKB economic model: through a one-time massive destruction, the total amount is permanently locked at 21 million, and the smart contract is upgraded to remove the minting function, moving towards deflation.
X Layer strategic focus: establishing X Layer as the only core of OKX's on-chain ecosystem and completing significant performance upgrades to undertake all future on-chain business.
Dual chain integration: OKT Chain will gradually exit the historical stage, and its token OKT will be exchanged for OKB at a fixed price, completing the unification of value and ecosystem.
After the destruction and merger, what should the price of OKB geometrically be?
The most direct trigger for the market this time is undoubtedly the brand new token economic model of OKB. OKX announced a one-time destruction of about 65.25 million OKB, permanently fixing its total issuance at 21 million—this number is obviously benchmarked against Bitcoin. At the market price at that time, this destruction was worth nearly $3 billion, marking it as one of the largest destruction events in crypto history.
More critically, to provide cryptographic-level guarantees for this commitment, OKX announced that after the destruction is complete, it will upgrade OKB's smart contract to permanently remove the functions of minting and manual burning. This means that the cap of 21 million will be hardcoded, unaffected by any centralized entity's will. OKB has jumped from a functional platform token to a scarce core asset with a 'digital gold' narrative.
However, there are still many questions that need to be resolved in this process. For example, what will happen to OKT from OKT Chain, and what should the real pricing of OKB be after the surge?
In the announcement, the official stated that 'the average closing price of OKB and OKT on the OKX exchange in the period from July 13 to August 12, 2025, will be used to regularly and automatically exchange users' OKT for an equivalent amount of OKB.' Additionally, before January 1, 2026, OKT holders can still recharge to OKX for conversion.
According to calculations, the exchange ratio of OKB to OKT is about 1:9.5. Following the announcement, trading of OKT was halted on various exchanges, and the final price settled at around $10.3. With the current circulating volume of OKT at about 17.84 million tokens, the total circulating market value of OKT should be around $18.3 million.
On the other hand, before the surge, OKB's total circulating market value was approximately $2.8 billion. Since OKT ultimately merges into OKB, the total market value of both should be around $2.98 billion. Averaging over 21 million tokens, the token price is approximately $141.9. This price also aligns with the market peak of $142.
However, the merger of OKB and OKT cannot simply be calculated as 1+1 for the final market value answer. After all, in addition to the token merger, users, assets, and potential application scenarios within OKT's original ecosystem will all be guided to X Layer. This brings new demand and fundamental support for OKB. Therefore, this merger undoubtedly enhances the overall market value and ecosystem value of OKB, achieving an effect of '1+1>2'.
Why was X Layer ultimately chosen in the dual chain competition?
The core of OKX's recent announcement is a major strategic decision regarding its on-chain ecosystem layout: after simultaneously operating both OKT Chain and X Layer, it ultimately decided to terminate support for the former and bet all resources and future on the latter. This decision is not a simple 'either-or' but a well-considered choice made based on technological generations, ecological strategy, and value narratives, opting for a more forward-looking and competitive development path.
To understand the necessity of this choice, we need to review the development trajectories of both chains.
OKT Chain: Established in 2021, it is a Layer 1 public chain built on the Cosmos SDK, representing OKX's early exploration in the public chain domain.
X Layer: Launched in 2023 in collaboration with Polygon Labs, it is a zkEVM Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.
The announcement clearly states that the shutdown of OKT Chain is due to its 'high overlap' with X Layer. Rather than letting two functionally similar chains disperse resources, it is better to concentrate all efforts on building a flagship. X Layer's clear positioning in DeFi, payment, and RWA, supported by an ecological fund and liquidity incentive programs, can more effectively build a deep, defensible professional ecosystem.
From a technical and ecological perspective, X Layer's advantages are comprehensive:
Leading in technological generations: As a Layer 2, X Layer inherently inherits Ethereum's security and achieves high scalability through ZK technology. Its performance upgrade metrics are exceptionally impressive.
Regarding this performance metric, OKX founder Star publicly stated on social media that this is far from the end: 'For a zk-rollup, 5000 TPS is not a big deal. We will reach greater heights.'
Compared to OKT Chain, X Layer as a Layer 2 has better compatibility with Ethereum and is more easily recognized by the market. From a technical perspective, X Layer's advantages of 5000 TPS and near-zero gas fees make it more suitable for OKX's focus on payment and high-frequency DeFi scenarios.
From the current data, although X Layer has not been live for long, it is comprehensively leading OKT Chain in total addresses, active addresses, and other aspects, which also indicates a higher market recognition of X Layer.
What is the potential of OKX's X Layer?
Overall, this strategic upgrade is milestone for OKX. However, considering the current market situation, it is a transformation filled with both opportunities and challenges.
In today's world where 'CEX + L2' has become the industry standard, centralized exchanges have already established patterns for public chain layouts. Whether it is Coinbase + Base or Binance + BSC, they have built first-mover advantages in this model. Coinbase cleverly leverages its brand influence and compliance image in the U.S. market to make Base a hub for 'cultural' and 'social' layers, becoming a gathering place for meme coins and SocialFi applications. BSC, on the other hand, harnesses Binance's traffic and liquidity to become one of the most active DeFi public chains. Although OKX also entered early, the dual chain model seems to have failed to establish the desired effect. Now, as it strives to build X Layer, the challenges it faces are not small.
However, on the other hand, OKX currently has some advantages.
1. Firstly, OKX, as one of the first major exchanges in the industry to launch a Wallet entry, has accumulated a large number of users and a good reputation over the past year. This upgrade is a brand new enhancement based on the original product line, and the optimization of performance and fees will inject motivation into the user experience.
Secondly, OKX Pay is one of the three major business segments of the OKX ecosystem (exchange, wallet, payment). Next, OKX Pay will default to using X Layer as its underlying public chain network. By building a high-performance X Layer, OKX provides a strong technical foundation for its payment tool OKX Pay, making it highly competitive in terms of speed and cost. At the same time, as a high-frequency application, OKX Pay will bring a continuous stream of real users and transaction volume to X Layer, promoting the prosperity of the entire on-chain ecosystem and ultimately feeding back value to the core token OKB, forming an ecological flywheel of 'exchange-wallet-payment-public chain.'
3. The global business capabilities built by OKX over the years bring precise partner resources for the ecological positioning of X Layer (DeFi, payment, RWA). For example, in order to tokenize real estate or bonds (RWA) in a certain country, it is necessary to cooperate with local financial and legal entities, which is precisely what OKX's BD team excels at. They can introduce these 'out-of-circle' high-value resources to X Layer.
3. Creating a 'super funnel' for user conversion, OKX has over 60 million users, and X Layer is designed as this 'super funnel', minimizing the barriers for users to enter the chain through seamless integration with exchanges and wallets and features like '0 Gas withdrawal', aiming to efficiently convert existing CEX users into incremental L2 users.
Therefore, the entire reform of XLayer and OKB can be seen as another impact of OKX + L2, as well as an important foundation for OKX to improve its three major business segments of exchange, wallet, and payment.
Overall, the 'heavy bomb' dropped by OKX may have impacts that go far beyond the astonishing bullish candle on the OKB price chart. This is not a simple technical iteration or a routine token destruction, but a meticulously planned, interconnected strategic offensive. The price increase seems to be just the bugle call for this transformation. With this move by OKX, a new arms race of 'exchange + chain' may unfold in the crypto market. The dust has yet to settle; let the bullets fly for a while.