OMG Token Surges 16% as Vitalik Buterin Hails the ‘Return of Plasma’

OMG, the native token of the OMG Network, climbed to a six-month high after Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin published a blog post on how Plasma, the technology behind the OMG Network, has the potential to reduce transaction fees and improve security.

The token rallied 16% to $0.77.

“Plasma lets us completely sidestep the data availability question, greatly reducing transaction fees,” Vitalik wrote in a blog post titled ‘Exit games for EVM validiums: the return of Plasma.’ “Plasma can be a significant security upgrade for chains that would otherwise be validiums.”

OMG Network, formerly known as OmiseGO, was among the first layer-2 scaling products when it debuted with an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017. It aimed to increase the efficiency of the Ethereum blockchain by using Plasma, a framework that bundles transactions together off of Ethereum and segments them into “child chains.”

Plasma has largely been replaced over the years by Ethereum rollups, which also take transactions off the main chain before sending the data back to the network.

Buterin said he believes Plasma still has a role to play, noting now is an “excellent opportunity to re-explore this design space, and come up with even more effective constructions to simplify the developer experience and protect users’ funds.”

OMG Token reached a record high $25.4 in January 2018 as the positive narrative around Plasma began to proliferate. It has since lost more than 97% of its value following the emergence of rollups like Arbitrum, Optimism and zero-knowledge rollups like Mina and Dusk Network.