By Frank, PANews
On August 13th, OKX released an upgrade announcement that caused a significant market turmoil. OKB’s price skyrocketed from $46 to a high of $142.88, a 200% increase within an hour. The reason for this dramatic market reaction is that this announcement wasn’t simply a technical upgrade; it represented a deliberate strategic shift. PANews conducted an in-depth analysis of the underlying context of this announcement, examining the potential impacts of OKX’s strategy.
The key points of this announcement can be briefly divided into the following points:
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OKB’s economic model is reshaped: Through a one-time massive destruction, the total amount will be permanently locked at 21 million, and the smart contract will be upgraded to remove the additional issuance function, moving towards deflation.
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X Layer Strategic Focus: Establish X Layer as the sole core of the OKX on-chain ecosystem, complete a major performance upgrade, and undertake all future on-chain businesses.
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Dual-chain integration: OKT Chain will gradually exit the market, and its token OKT will be exchanged for OKB at a fixed price, completing the unification of value and ecosystem.
What will the OKB price be after the destruction and merger?
The most immediate catalyst for the market explosion was undoubtedly OKB’s new token economics. OKX announced a one-time burn of approximately 65.25 million OKBs, permanently fixing the total supply at 21 million—a figure clearly benchmarked against Bitcoin. Based on the market price at the time, this burn was worth nearly $3 billion, making it one of the largest burns in crypto history.
Crucially, to provide cryptographically secure support for this commitment, OKX announced that it will upgrade OKB’s smart contract after the destruction is complete, permanently removing the functions for additional issuance (mint) and manual destruction (burn). This means the 21 million cap will be hard-coded into the code, unaffected by the will of any centralized entity. OKB has transformed from a functional platform token into a scarce core asset embodying the “digital gold” narrative.
However, many issues remain to be resolved, such as the future of OKT Chain’s OKT and the true price of OKB after its surge.
The official announcement stated that “OKT will be automatically converted to an equivalent amount of OKB on a regular basis based on the average closing price of OKB and OKT on the OKEx spot market between July 13 and August 12, 2025 (the “Average Closing Price”).” Furthermore, OKT holders can still deposit to OKX for conversion until January 1, 2026.
According to estimates, the exchange rate between OKB and OKT is approximately 1:9.5. Following the announcement, OKT trading on various exchanges ceased, with the final price set at around $10.3. Based on OKT’s current circulating supply of approximately 17.84 million, the total circulating market capitalization of OKT is approximately $183 million.
On the other hand, before the rally, OKB’s total circulating market capitalization was approximately $2.8 billion. With OKT’s eventual merger into OKB, the combined market capitalization of the two should be around $2.98 billion. Averaged across 21 million tokens, the price per token is approximately $141.9. This price is consistent with the market’s peak of $142.
However, the merger of OKB and OKT cannot simply be interpreted as a 1+1 sum. After all, beyond the token merger, OKT’s existing ecosystem users, assets, and potential application scenarios will be channeled to the X Layer. This creates new demand and fundamental support for OKB. Therefore, this merger will undoubtedly increase OKB’s overall market capitalization and ecosystem value, achieving a “1+1 > 2” effect.
Why did X Layer finally choose between the two blockchains?
The core of OKX’s recent announcement is a major strategic decision regarding its on-chain ecosystem layout: after operating both OKT Chain and X Layer, it has ultimately decided to terminate support for the former, placing all resources and its future on the latter. This decision is not a simple “either-or” choice, but rather a carefully considered choice based on technological generation, ecosystem strategy, and value narrative, resulting in a more forward-looking and competitive development path.
To understand the inevitability of this choice, we need to review the development trajectories of the two chains.
OKT Chain: Founded in 2021, it is a Layer 1 public chain built based on the Cosmos SDK and is OKX’s early exploration in the public chain field.
X Layer: Launched in 2023 in partnership with Polygon Labs, it is a zkEVM Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.
The announcement explicitly stated that the OKT Chain shutdown was due to “high overlap” with X Layer. Rather than splitting resources between two chains with similar functions, it’s better to concentrate all efforts on building a single flagship. X Layer’s clear positioning in DeFi, payments, and RWA, coupled with its ecosystem fund and liquidity incentive program, can more effectively build a deep, well-defended professional ecosystem.
From a technical and ecological perspective, X Layer has comprehensive advantages:
Generational Leading Technology: As a Layer 2, X Layer inherently inherits the security of Ethereum and achieves high scalability through ZK technology. Its performance indicators after the upgrade are very impressive.
Regarding this performance indicator, OKX founder Star even stated on social media that this is far from the end: “For a zk-rollup, 5,000 TPS is not a big deal. We will reach higher heights.”
Compared to OKTChain, X Layer, as a Layer 2 platform, is more compatible with Ethereum and more readily accepted by the market. Technically, X Layer’s 5,000 TPS and near-zero gas usage make it more suitable for OKX’s key development areas, such as payment and high-frequency DeFi.
Judging from the current data, although X Layer has been online for a short time, it is already ahead of OKT Chain in terms of total addresses, active addresses, and other aspects. This also shows that the market has a higher degree of recognition for X Layer.
What are the prospects of OKX’s focus on X Layer?
Overall, this strategic upgrade is a milestone for OKX. However, from a market perspective, it presents both opportunities and challenges.
With “CEX + L2” becoming the industry standard, centralized exchanges are already establishing a strong presence in public blockchains. Both Coinbase + Base and Binance + BSC have established first-mover advantages through this model. Coinbase cleverly leveraged its brand influence and regulatory compliance reputation in the US market to develop Base into a “cultural” and “social” layer, becoming a hub for meme coins and SocialFi applications. BSC, leveraging Binance’s traffic and liquidity, has become one of the most active DeFi public chains. Although OKX entered the market early, its dual-chain model seems to have failed to achieve the desired results. Now, with its focus on building the X Layer, it faces significant challenges.
However, on the other hand, OKX currently has some advantages.
OKX, as one of the industry’s leading exchanges and the first to launch a Wallet portal, has accumulated a large user base and a strong reputation over the past year. This upgrade represents a complete overhaul of the existing product line, with performance and fee optimizations that will further enhance user experience.
2. Second, OKX Pay is one of the three major business segments of the OKX ecosystem (exchange, wallet, and payment). Going forward, OKX Pay will default to X Layer as its underlying public blockchain 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. Furthermore, as a high-frequency application, OKX Pay will in turn bring a steady stream of real users and transaction volume to X Layer, driving the prosperity of the entire on-chain ecosystem and ultimately feeding value back into the core OKB token, forming an ecological flywheel of “exchange-wallet-payment-public blockchain.”
3. OKX’s global business capabilities, built over many years of operation, provide precise partner resources for X Layer’s ecosystem positioning (DeFi, payments, and RWA). For example, tokenizing real estate or bonds (RWA) in a specific country requires collaborating with local financial and legal entities, a skill that OKX’s BD team excels in. They can bring these “outside” and high-value resources to X Layer.
4. Create a “super funnel” for user conversion. OKX has over 60 million users, and X Layer is designed as a “super funnel” for this purpose. Through seamless integration with exchanges and wallets and features such as “0 Gas withdrawal”, it minimizes the threshold for users to enter the chain, aiming to efficiently convert existing CEX users into incremental L2 users.
Therefore, the entire XLayer and OKB reform can be seen as another impact on OKX+L2, and it is also an important foundation for OKX to improve its three major business segments: exchange, wallet, and payment.
Overall, the impact of OKX’s bombshell may extend far beyond the striking bullish candlestick on the OKB price chart. This isn’t a simple technological iteration or a routine token burn, but rather a meticulously planned, interlocking strategic offensive. The price surge seems merely the clarion call for this revolution. With OKX’s latest move, the crypto market may yet ignite another “exchange + blockchain” arms race. While the dust has yet to settle, let’s wait and see.