The cumulative crypto market printed green indexes all around as Ethereum led the bullish sentiments for altcoins. Amid this, OKX’s native token, OKB, literally blasted by more than 173% over the past 24 hours to hit its new all-time high (ATH), while other top exchange-based tokens watched it pump.
The massive surge comes in as OKX is rolling out one of its strategic upgrades to its zkEVM-based public chain, X Layer, and a decisive shift in tokenomics. It includes the permanent burn of a staggering 65.26 million OKB from historical buybacks and reserves. However, it would also fix the total supply at 21 million.
OKB tops CEX token gains
According to the announcement, OKTChain will be phased out with all OKT automatically converted to OKB based on a month-long average closing price between July 13 and August 12, 2025. The update led the way to a brief rally for the OKB price to hit over $139 before retracting to around $106.
OKB is trading at an average price of $110.7 at press time. Its 24-hour trading volume spiked by 15,812% to hit $842 million. OKB is among the top 5 biggest CEX tokens. It holds the market cap of over $6.5 billion.
Wednesday morning turned out to be good for all the top exchange-based tokens. Binance’s BNB price jumped by 6% to trade around $853. Its 24 hour trading volume is up 22% to stand at $3.27 billion. It is the biggest CEX-based crypto and holds a market cap of $118 billion.
UNUS SED LEO (LEO), the second-largest token in the category, also remained up by 3%, depicting positive sentiment among investors. LEO is trading at an average price of $9.24 at press time.
OKX aims at DeFi, payments, RWA
OKX mentioned that since launching X Layer in 2023 with Polygon, it has steadily built up speed, scale, and developer adoption. Now, it’s doubling down on its goal to make X Layer a prime destination for DeFi, payments, and real-world asset applications.
The chain has fully integrated Polygon’s latest CDK upgrade, boosting throughput to 5,000 TPS. This slashes gas fees to near zero, and tightens security while staying Ethereum-compatible. OKX Wallet, Exchange, and Pay will all natively run on X Layer.
From August 13, OKT trading will be halted, and withdrawals of OKB to Ethereum L1 will stop by the same afternoon. By August 15, OKT will be automatically swapped to OKB on user accounts, followed by the mega-burn event that locks OKB’s supply forever. The final step comes on August 18, when the OKB smart contract will be upgraded to eliminate minting and burning functions.
