Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Onyx (XCN) has seen its token price surge over 80% in the past 24 hours following the launch of its new Goliath Mainnet.
The upgrade marks a shift from Onyx’s existing Layer 3 rollup to a standalone Layer 1 blockchain, with promises of improved scalability, security, and performance.
One of the more notable claims associated with Goliath is its potential to match, or even exceed the transaction speeds of traditional payment networks like Visa, which processes around 24,000 transactions per second (TPS).
While the mainnet utilizes a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that could, in theory, support significantly higher throughput, achieving that performance in a decentralized environment remains a considerable technical hurdle.
At press time, XCN is trading at $0.022, with a 136% gain over the past seven days. The recent rally follows a volatile start to 2025, during which XCN surged more than 1,500% in just two weeks to a peak of $0.035.
The rally has fueled a sharp rise in market capitalization, with XCN adding over $300 million in value in the past 24 hours, representing a 76.79% increase. The token now leads crypto market gains after breaking back into the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
XCN on-chain activity and trading volume surge post-launch
XCN’s rally has coincided with a surge in both trading volume and user activity. On April 11, the token logged 3,902 daily active addresses and a trading volume of $591 million, marking a notable uptick in engagement following the Goliath Mainnet launch.
Yet, despite the momentum in spot markets, futures traders appear cautious. The OI-weighted funding rate for XCN stood at -0.5648% as of April 11, according to CoinGlass, a sign that short sellers remain dominant. This may lead to increased volatility in the short term, especially if long traders are forced to exit positions abruptly.
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