The impress of UNI, the native governance token for Uniswap, jumped extra than 14% in the 24 hours earlier than Uniswap Labs formally announced on Thursday morning at 9 a.m. ET that it used to be launching a new L2 network, prompting speculation that at the least some traders had data in regards to the facts earlier than time and had traded on it. Over the identical time interval, the greatest cryptocurrencies by market cap each and each dropped between 2% to some%.

One fundamental share of proof for the speculation used to be a tweet from Joseph Delong, CTO of lending protocol Astaria, at 12:58 a.m ET Thursday, strongly implying that the announcement from the world’s greatest decentralized alternate used to be coming. In his post, Delong shared a screenshot of a 2022 article written by enterprise capitalist Dan Elitzer arguing that a Unichain L2 used to be inevitable. “Anyone can even soundless accuse Dan of being a time traveler,” Delong commented.

The announcement about Unichain used to be additionally despatched earlier than time on embargo to some data retail outlets, along with Unchained. And crypto publication Bankless printed a podcast in regards to the facts two hours earlier than the reputable announcement.

Read More: Uniswap Labs Publicizes Contemporary Unichain Layer 2 to Make stronger the Fragmented DeFi Skills

Important crypto security expert See told Unchained that UNI’s upward thrust perceived to be a clear case of oldsters with arrive data procuring and selling on the facts.

“Any time a gargantuan thing occurs at any firm, crypto or no longer, americans accept as true with to know about it to plan up. Practically invariably at the least some of those americans leak the facts. So virtually no doubt that came about right here and can virtually continuously happen,” See mentioned. “The adaptation is that in crypto the markets are fairly illiquid, and the mouths are fairly free-flowing. So you extinguish up with 12% gains earlier than announcements.”

A spokesperson for Uniswap Labs denied the possibility that any procuring and selling in UNI earlier than the announcement would possibly maybe need been implemented by employees of the company. “In an abundance of caution, Uniswap Labs implemented a procuring and selling restriction on UNI for its employees earlier than the Unichain announcement,” the spokesperson mentioned.

Records from Etherscan and Nansen additionally confirmed some fundamental trades interesting UNI in the time leading up to the announcement. farmertaiki.eth (0x98e) which has an general steadiness exceeding $1 million, swapped $350,000 of USDC for UNI roughly an hour earlier than Delong’s post on X used to be printed. And a special deal with (0x1666), which has the ENS findnemo.eth and constantly interacts with staking pools, swapped $50,000 USDC for six,443 UNI tokens at 8 a.m. Thursday, according to Nansen.