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How does Optimism ensure long-term success?

Optimism strives to create a sustainable ecosystem flywheel. In this flywheel, revenue contributed by OP Chains to the Optimism Collective funds open-source development and drives ecosystem growth, which strengthens the OP Stack and attracts more end-users, apps, integration partners, and chains. In implementing this flywheel, Optimism uses a public decision making process designed to prevent short-term profit seeking at the expense of the platform, while ensuring organizations contributing the OP Stack remain accountable to tokenholders and customers. This process includes a capital allocation model, designed to avoid many of the common failure modes of corporate governance, aiming to ensure the product always remains at the cutting edge. For more details, please see the Operating Manual. capital alloction

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How does Optimism generate revenue?

OP Chains in the Superchain earn transaction fees whenever users send transactions onchain, including for payments, trading, identity, and other applications. Each chain also pays costs to publish its activity to Ethereum for security. OP Chains contribute a portion of their revenue to Optimism. This treasury is used to drive growth, provide shared infrastructure, and fund open source contributions that benefit the Superchain. Superchain member chains contribute the greater of:
  • 15% of net transaction fee profit (transaction fees earned on L2 - costs paid to Ethereum L1), or
  • 2.5% of gross transaction fees
OP Mainnet contributes 100% of its revenue to this shared treasury. You can find more information about revenue in the here. You can also find the list of wallets across L1 and OP Mainnet where the Optimism Collective Revenue earned sits here, on the right-hand side of the Collective Contribution page.
  • OP Treasury Address for Foundation Allocated Budget: 0x2A82Ae142b2e62Cb7D10b55E323ACB1Cab663a26
    • This address hold the remaining OP tokens allocated to the Foundation, which the Foundation requires governance approval to access (via annual FND budget proposals).
  • OP Treasury Address for Foundation Approved Budget: 0x2501c477D0A35545a387Aa4A3EEe4292A9a8B3F0
    • This is the Foundation’s OP Treasury which is available for the Foundation to utilize as the Foundation’s budget granted through the initial token allocation. Transactions from this wallet are typically internal operational movements per the Foundation’s needs.
    • Additional token may be moved from 0x2…a26 to 0x2…3F0 based on governance approval of budgets.
  • OP Foundation Grants Wallet: 0x19793c7824Be70ec58BB673CA42D2779d12581BE
    • This Foundation wallet is used to make private OP grants. This is topped up from the OP Treasury Foundation Approved Budget wallet 0x2…B3F0 as needed.
  • OP Foundation Locked Grants Wallet: 0xE4553b743E74dA3424Ac51f8C1E586fd43aE226F
    • This Foundation wallet is used to hold OP for one year lockups. This is topped up from the OP Foundation Grants Wallet 0x1...81BE as needed.

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How is the treasury managed?

The treasury is currently stewarded by the Foundation, but is subject to oversight by key stakeholder groups, via Optimism’s public decision making process. Specifically, tokenholders, chains, apps, and users are asked to oversee annual budgets, which enable the Foundation to deploy the treasury into initiatives aimed at generated the sustainable flywheel described above. Foundation Budget Reports can be found here on the governance forum. The OP Token Unlock (Estimated) sheet can be found here. You can find more information via the Operating Manual here.

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What is Optimism’s commitment to Open Source Software?

Optimism has always been committed to funding open-source software. OP Labs, a core contributor to the OP Stack, is registered as a public benefit corporation with a mission to enhance and enshrine access to public goods. The OP Stack is MIT licensed and Optimism dedicates a significant portion of its treasury to funding public goods and open-source software. Optimism operates various grant programs to incentivize and reward open-source contributions. Grant programs can be found via atlas.optimism.io.

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What can I do with the OP Token?

The OP token was created in May of 2022, with an initial supply of 4,294,967,296 OP tokens. The token was launched as a governance token to enable tokenholders to weigh in on technical and economic decisions that impact Optimism, such as protocol upgrades and capital allocation. The Optimism Foundation estimates the total supply of circulating OP tokens to increase as detailed in this sheet. Tokenholders can use OP to vote on:
  • Protocol Upgrades
  • Token Allocations
  • Adjusting Inflation
  • Removing the Director of the Optimism Foundation
  • Dissolutions
  • Elections (and representative removal)
  • Protecting the rights of tokenholders by consenting to any changes to the founding documents of the Optimism Foundation, if those changes would materially reduce their rights.
  • Ratification of Governing Documents
You can find full details of what Tokenholders can vote with the Operating Manual here. You can sign up to vote with your tokens here.