What is Linea?
Linea is an Ethereum Layer 2 built by ConsenSys, the Brooklyn-based Web3 software company that Joseph Lubin (one of the original Ethereum co-founders) started in 2014. Mainnet went live in July 2023 under the working name "ConsenSys zkEVM" and was rebranded to Linea soon after. The chain is a Type 2 zkEVM rollup, which means it is fully EVM-equivalent at the bytecode level: contracts that run on Ethereum L1 deploy on Linea without code changes, and the proving system is a custom zk-SNARK design built in-house at ConsenSys rather than a STARK-based stack.
The native LINEA token shipped in September 2025 through a large airdrop after about two years of mainnet activity and the multi-phase Linea Voyage participation programs. Total supply is 72,009,990,000 (about 72 billion). LINEA is unusual among L2 tokens because Linea uses ETH for gas, not the native token. LINEA itself is wired into a dual-burn mechanism where part of every transaction fee burns ETH and part burns LINEA, and the chain is tied to the wider ConsenSys product stack through MetaMask integration, the largest self-custody wallet user base in crypto.
LINEA price today
LINEA trades against the dollar, USDT, and USDC across major venues. The quote on this page is volume-weighted across the exchanges with the deepest order books and refreshes every 60 seconds. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit all listed LINEA on day one, so most of the size sits there.
What moves LINEA on any given day:
- Linea TVL. DeFi flows into Mendi Finance, Lynex, Renzo, Ether.fi, Velocore, ZeroLend, and the rest of the on-chain ecosystem feed back into how the market values the L2. TVL passed $1B during the Surge campaigns and tracks lower during quieter phases. Ethereum settlement keeps the rollup anchored to L1 throughput.
- MetaMask integration usage. Linea is the default L2 surfaced inside MetaMask flows, so wallet activity (swaps, bridges, gas-paid-in-tokens features) translates directly into Linea transaction volume more reliably than for L2s without a captive wallet.
- Dual-burn rate. Higher network activity means more ETH and more LINEA burned per block. The supply pressure side of the LINEA price story rises and falls with the burn rate, which is why throughput and fee revenue numbers matter beyond the headline TVL.
- LINEA unlock schedule. Team, investor, and ecosystem allocations unlock on a published multi-year calendar after the September 2025 launch. Cliffs are public; price tends to soften ahead of larger ones and recover after the supply has cleared. Anyone holding LINEA should know the next unlock date and what fraction of float it represents.
- Broader L2 rotation. LINEA trades alongside Arbitrum, Optimism, ZKsync, Scroll, and the rest of the rollup basket. When capital rotates between L2 narratives, the basket moves together more than the individual fundamentals would suggest.
Live prices stream into the card above. The analysis below uses the levels at page load.
How Linea’s Type 2 zkEVM works
Type 2 means full EVM equivalence at the bytecode level. The Linea zkEVM executes the same opcodes as Ethereum L1, with the same gas semantics in the cases that matter for ordinary Solidity contracts. Anything that compiles for Ethereum runs on Linea without modification. Tooling that already understands EVM bytecode (Hardhat, Foundry, Tenderly, every block explorer) works on Linea out of the box.
Validity proofs settle to Ethereum L1. Linea generates zk-SNARK proofs in-house at ConsenSys, posts them along with state commitments, and once a proof verifies on L1 the corresponding withdrawals finalize. There is no seven-day optimistic challenge window, which is the part of the zk-rollup pitch that lands hardest with institutional flows and treasury operators.
Trade-offs are real. Type 2 equivalence is harder to prove than Type 4 setups (which compile high-level languages to a non-EVM target) so prover costs are higher, and ConsenSys has been iterating on proof system efficiency since launch. The flip side is that developer onboarding is essentially zero work, and the entire MetaMask user base sees Linea as a normal EVM chain rather than a separate ecosystem with its own toolchain.
MetaMask integration and the ConsenSys advantage
Most L2s have to fight for distribution. Linea does not. ConsenSys also builds MetaMask, the self-custody wallet that sits at roughly 30 million monthly active users, and Linea is wired into MetaMask as a first-class network. Adding the chain takes one click rather than the usual custom-RPC dance, MetaMask Bridges supports Linea as a top-tier route, and gas-abstraction features developed for MetaMask Snaps land on Linea first.
The practical effect is a distribution moat that other L2 teams cannot match without building their own wallet stack. Onboarding flows for new dApps on Linea typically convert better than equivalent flows on chains that require users to add a custom RPC, and recurring activity sticks because users do not have to switch wallets to use the network. ConsenSys also operates Infura, the largest hosted RPC provider in Ethereum, which means Linea apps get production-grade infrastructure without separate vendor sourcing.
The flip side, and it is a real one, is concentration. Linea, MetaMask, and Infura all sit inside one company. Decentralization roadmaps have been published, but at the moment the three pieces of the stack share an operator, and operational risk at ConsenSys is operational risk for the chain.
Linea tokenomics: the dual-burn mechanism
LINEA total supply is 72,009,990,000 (about 72 billion). Initial circulating float at the September 2025 launch covered the airdrop allocation; the rest is spread across team, investor, and ecosystem buckets that unlock over a multi-year schedule. ConsenSys raised more than $450M at a $7B+ valuation in 2022 from a backer list that included Microsoft, Animoca, SoftBank, and JPMorgan, and those investor allocations sit inside the unlock calendar.
The piece that makes Linea tokenomics specific is the dual-burn. Linea uses ETH for gas, not LINEA. A portion of every transaction fee burns ETH (which the rollup consumes for L1 settlement and data publication), and a portion burns LINEA. The aim is to make both ETH and LINEA structurally deflationary on Linea activity, so the more transactions the chain processes, the more supply pressure leaves both tokens. ConsenSys positions this as a way to align Linea with the wider Ethereum economy rather than competing with it for fee revenue.
Native ETH yield is the other unusual piece. Linea announced in 2024 that bridged ETH on the chain would be natively yield-farmed through Lido (stETH) and the yield routed back to ecosystem participants. The result is a chain where idle ETH bridged for use in DeFi earns staking yield by default, which is a different design from any other major L2 in production today. LINEA itself does not pay protocol staking yield to passive holders.
Linea Voyage and Surge: how the ecosystem grew
Linea Voyage was the multi-phase community-incentive program ConsenSys ran from 2023 through 2024. Each phase was structured around testnet and mainnet quests covering swaps, bridging, lending, NFT mints, and other on-chain actions. Voyage drove the early user base, generated the wallet history that fed into the September 2025 airdrop allocation, and gave ConsenSys a long enough window of real usage data to tune the proving system before the token launched.
Linea Surge and Surge++ were the liquidity-mining campaigns that followed. Surge rewarded LP positions and TVL behaviour across major Linea DeFi protocols (Mendi Finance, Lynex, Renzo, Ether.fi, ZeroLend, and the wider basket) with points that converted into LINEA at launch. TVL on the chain pushed past $1B at the campaign peaks, and the activity from Surge++ extended through 2025.
For LINEA holders, the Voyage and Surge story matters because both programs created a long usage runway that other L2s did not have when their tokens launched. Real recurring users showed up before the airdrop, which is a different starting point from chains that try to manufacture activity around the token launch itself.
How to buy and bridge Linea (LINEA)
Two paths are reasonable. If the goal is to use Linea or any of the Linea DeFi protocols, bridging from Ethereum L1 is the cleanest way to fund a wallet. If the goal is to hold LINEA for price exposure, a centralized exchange is faster and skips the bridge mechanics.
- Pick a regulated exchange that lists LINEA. Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, KuCoin, and Bybit all carry deep LINEA markets from day one. Our exchange ratings compare the leading options on fees, security, and licensing.
- Verify your identity. KYC on regulated platforms usually clears in under 10 minutes. If you intend to use Linea rather than just trade LINEA, set up MetaMask at the same time. Linea is wired into MetaMask as a one-click network, so the setup flow takes seconds.
- Fund the account. Bank transfers (ACH, SEPA) are cheapest but settle in 1 to 3 business days. Stablecoin deposits (USDC, USDT) settle in minutes for the lowest fee. Cards are instant but cost 2 to 4% in spread.
- Place the order. LINEA/USDT and LINEA/USDC have the deepest order books on most venues. For positions over $10,000, a limit order placed during US-Europe overlap reduces slippage versus a flat market order.
- Withdraw or bridge. From the exchange, withdraw LINEA on the Linea network if it is supported. Otherwise pull LINEA on Ethereum L1 and move funds through the official Linea Bridge or MetaMask Bridges, which both route through the canonical contract. Third-party fast bridges settle in minutes for a small fee but introduce counterparty risk. For longer-term price scenarios that account for unlock schedules and L2 competition, see our Linea price forecast.
Send a small test transaction first when moving large amounts between chains. A $1 test beats a misrouted five-figure withdrawal that lands on the wrong network.
Risks of holding Linea
ConsenSys concentration is the structural risk most LINEA holders underestimate. Linea, MetaMask, and Infura all sit inside one company, and the chain depends on the wallet for distribution and the RPC provider for infrastructure in a way that other L2s do not. Several other risks stack on top.
- ConsenSys centralization. The same team operates the chain, the dominant wallet, and the dominant RPC. Decentralization roadmaps have been published but the sequencer and prover are still ConsenSys-operated. Operational risk at the company is operational risk for the network in a way that does not apply to L2s with separate operator and tooling teams.
- ZK-rollup competition. Linea competes directly with ZKsync, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, Taiko, and a wave of smaller zkEVM chains for DeFi liquidity and developer mindshare. The category has structurally lower margins than L1, and Linea has to defend its position by leaning on the MetaMask distribution rather than on raw technical lead, because most Type 2 zkEVMs end up looking similar at the developer interface.
- LINEA unlock pressure. The 72B supply unlocks on a multi-year schedule covering team, investor, and ecosystem buckets after the September 2025 launch. Cliffs are public; price tends to soften ahead of larger ones. The post-launch all-time high was modest, which means unlock recipients can still be in profit at lower spot prices and that changes the supply pressure calculus.
- MetaMask UX dependency. Linea’s distribution moat is real but it is also a single point of failure. Any change in MetaMask product priorities, any regulatory action against ConsenSys (the SEC sued ConsenSys over MetaMask in 2024 before later dropping the case), or any wider shift in self-custody wallet share would translate directly into Linea usage.
- No native protocol yield for LINEA holders. LINEA does not pay protocol staking yield to passive holders. The dual-burn reduces supply over time on activity, but holders earn nothing from holding LINEA itself unless they actively LP or trade.
- Sequencer centralization. Like every major rollup in production today, the Linea sequencer is operated by a single entity. Decentralization is on the roadmap; it has not shipped at scale.
This page is information, not financial advice. Talk to someone licensed before allocating real capital.
Linea's all-time high of $0.046669 was set on September 10, 2025. The current price sits +94.73% below that peak. Distance from the all-time high is a common reference point when evaluating long recoveries and macro support or resistance.
Buying Linea (LINEA) is a five-step routine once you have picked the right venue and pair. The steps below mirror what most investors do today.
Whether Linea is a good investment depends on your goals, time horizon, and tolerance for volatility. Like all cryptocurrencies, LINEA carries real market risk: prices can rise or fall sharply in a day, and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns.
This page provides data and analysis for educational purposes only. It is not financial advice. Always do your own research, diversify, and never invest more than you can afford to lose.
