Optimism (OP)

Just checked some info about @Optimism, one thing that keeps catching my attention is Optimism’s strange position in the market. OP Stack is powering a huge part of the rollup ecosystem today. But when I look closer, the chain that built the rails might not be the one capturing the most value. Here’s how I currently see the situation around Optimism | $OP 👇

1/ OP Stack has become one of the most widely adopted rollup infrastructures After the Bedrock upgrade, the architecture became much closer to Ethereum itself. Tooling works smoothly and infra teams already know how to run it without friction. Launching a new chain became almost plug-and-play. That’s why major players pulled the trigger quickly: – @base (Coinbase) – @unichain (Uniswap) – @soneium (Sony) – @inkonchain (Kraken) – @worldcoinfnd From an infra perspective, OP Stack is clearly winning adoption.

2/ But the actual users and liquidity are not on OP Mainnet When I compare the data, the gap is pretty obvious. @Base currently holds: – ~$3.9B TVL – ~$4.7B in stablecoins – ~10M+ daily transactions Meanwhile OP Mainnet sits around: – ~$218M TVL – ~$538M stablecoins So while the stack is widely used, the center of gravity has shifted toward Base.

3/ Superchain economic model is starting to show cracks The original idea was simple. Superchain members would contribute something like: – ~2.5% of revenue – or ~15% of profit back to the Optimism Collective. That revenue flow was expected to support ecosystem funding and even $OP buybacks. But then Base signaled they want to move away from that structure and roll their own stack. Since Base is generating massive sequencer revenue, losing that contribution hits the Superchain narrative pretty hard.

4/ Distribution might be the real moat in L2 After watching Base grow, I keep coming back to one thought. Base didn’t win because of better technology. Coinbase already controls a massive distribution layer: – a global exchange – millions of wallet users – fiat onramps – a direct pipeline of retail liquidity They effectively turned that distribution into an L2 user acquisition engine.

5/ This feels like a classic open-source infra trap Build great rails, everyone adopts them. But the biggest players capture the economic value. We’ve seen similar dynamics before with: – Linux infrastructure – AWS customers building internal systems – even Ethereum vs some L2s. The technology spreads everywhere, but value capture becomes fragmented.

6/ OP Stack ecosystem is still strong To be fair, the OP Stack ecosystem still dominates a large share of L2 blockspace. – Mantle: $765.16M TVL, $876M stables, 0.5 UOPS – Ink: $460.9M TVL, $493.2M stables, 7.2 UOPS – Celo: $25.5M TVL, $158M stables, 20 UOPS – Unichain: $49.27M TVL, $174.5M stables, 10.8 UOPS – BOB: $55.83M TVL, $20.5M stables, 0.06 UOPS are all running on the stack and contributing activity. So the infrastructure layer remains extremely relevant.

7/ The real question now is value accrual for $OP From my perspective, the Superchain thesis depends heavily on: – native cross-chain liquidity. – seamless composability between OP chains. If Optimism can ship strong interoperability fast enough, the ecosystem might still lock in long-term value. If not, large players could continue forking the stack and keeping the economics for themselves. Base already showed that path. I’m still bullish on the infrastructure Optimism built. The tech clearly works. But when I evaluate $OP as an investment narrative, the big question I keep asking is simple: What exactly does owning $OP give exposure to in the long run?