Boom in TVL for layer-2 Linea: is a token airdrop on the way?

Recently, the layer-2 Linea has experienced a significant boom in terms of DeFi TVL.

This is a relatively new project, which already exploded last year, and is now experiencing a second boom. 

The First Boom of Linea’s TVL

Linea is a layer-2 of Ethereum.

Its chain was launched in July 2023, but initially it had gathered only a few tens of millions of dollars in TVL. Although it may seem like a significant amount, in reality in DeFi it’s not much.

However, even then it was in clear growth, so much so that by April of last year it had already significantly surpassed 100 million. 

At that point, there was the first boom. In fact, within just a few weeks, the TVL of Linea skyrocketed above 250 million, and within a month, it rose above half a billion dollars.

The peak of that first boom was recorded in July of last year when it rose above 700 million. 

The problem is that it was a mini-bubble, so much so that by August it had already returned to 500 million, and by September to 450. 

Since then, there has been a long, practically continuous decline, which ended only in April of this year, but never fell below 120 million. 

The Second Boom

Since during 2024 a mini-bubble on Linea’s TVL had inflated, by April of this year it seemed that the situation had already stabilized. Moreover, from about 10 million dollars in July 2023 to 120 million in April 2025, the growth had already been significant. 

Instead, starting from July 2025, the TVL of Linea began to rise again, first surpassing 150 million and then even 170. 

At that point, there was a new powerful boom, which in light of the previous one might even seem like a mini-bubble, given its speed. 

In fact, in August it first rose above 280 million, and then in the second half of the month it soared above 700 million. In these first days of September, it is recording its all-time highs above 800 million dollars, and this rise at the moment does not yet seem to be over. 

In short, in recent months it has gone from 120 million to about 900.

Comparison with Other Chains

Thanks to this latest boom, Linea has suddenly jumped to the 12th position overall among the chains with the most TVL in DeFi.

The first, Ethereum, is unmatched, with its 77 billion, but it is the most important layer-1 in the world for decentralized finance. The second most important layer-1, that of Solana, has more than 11 billion dollars in DeFi.

Among Ethereum’s layer-2 solutions, from this perspective, Base stands out, with more than 4.7 billion dollars. However, Base is a layer-2 created by Coinbase, thus backed by one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, and the main one in the USA.

Note that Arbitrum, the other major layer-2 of Ethereum, has about 3.1 billion dollars in TVL, thus still far above Linea. However, Arbitrum was launched in 2021.

The third layer-2 of Ethereum, Polygon, however, has a TVL only slightly higher than that of Linea: 1.1 billion dollars compared to 0.8. All other chains in the top 10 are layer-1.

For example, the layer-2 Unichain of Uniswap and Optimism are ranked 17th and 18th, respectively, with about half the TVL of Linea. Among these, Optimism was launched in 2021, like Arbitrum. 

What is Linea

Linea is a layer-2 created to strengthen Ethereum and the entire ETH-based economy.

Claims to be the only rollup zkEVM 100% proven that ensures full equivalence with Ethereum, and is compatible with all Ethereum tools and the client stack.

Its goal is to become the best layer-2 for Ethereum, and it has been developed by the Ethereum open source community, which includes prominent names such as Consensys, ENS, and Status.

In this way, it leverages Consensys’s decade-long experience in understanding and supporting financial institutions like Mastercard and Visa, and creates an enterprise-level infrastructure for global finance.

The layer-2 Linea is designed and optimized for: 

• tokenization
• payments
• on-chain trading and liquidations
• seamless integration with major DeFi protocols
• no DAO governance risk
• economy aligned with ETH

Among its peculiar features is the burn of ETH equal to 20% of transaction fees, with very low fees, and native staking on bridged ETH with the yield distributed to liquidity providers. The ultimate goal is to offer the best risk-adjusted return on capital. 

The LINEA Token: The Most Anticipated Airdrop by the Community

The project also has its own eponymous token, which is not yet tradable on exchanges.

The majority of the LINEA token supply will be allocated to developers, users, public assets, and research and development on Ethereum, and will be distributed by a consortium of Ethereum administrators. The goal is to create the largest Ethereum ecosystem fund managed by trusted administrators.

In the meantime, the community and the degens who have farmed LXP-L points over the past months are awaiting the airdrop of one of the largest layer-2s in the crypto landscape. Details regarding the snapshot and tokenomics are not yet known.