Super-chain and third-level networks: how the Optimism (OP) L2 solution ecosystem has changed
Market indicators and dynamics of the Optimism course
In 2024, the native OP token rate increased by 24% from $1.29 to $1.6 as of October. Moreover, in March of the same year, the price of the OP cryptocurrency reached its historical maximum at $4.65, after which it began to decline along with other altcoins against the background of the general decline of the crypto market.
According to the total amount of assets blocked in DeFi protocols (TVL), which is $645 million, Optimism in the decentralized finance (DeFi) segment ranks 6th among second-tier solutions after Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, Scroll, and Blast. In an hour, this indicator in the Optimism L2 network grew by only 7.5% from $600 million. For comparison, according to the data of the DeFi Llama service, in the second level Base solution, during the same period, TVL increased approximately 6.5 times from $349 million to $2.285 billion
Optimism protocol updates
In February 2024, Optimism's second-level network experienced a short-term failure caused by the developers' debugging of the incident response system. As a result of the failure, Ethereum withdrawals from the Optimism L2 network were temporarily suspended.
This debugging was a technical experiment within the framework of introducing the new SuperchainConfig contract, designed to increase the reliability of the protection of digital assets in the Optimism network for all users. The introduction of SuperchainConfig also aims to improve the currently existing delay mechanism — the period of time during which validators do not add new blocks.
As it became known earlier, the Optimism team started preparing the so-called "superchain" — a unified network of second-level blockchains developed using OP Stack technology. OP Stack is a set of tools that simplify the creation of second-level networks on top of Ethereum and are compatible with Optimism. The appearance of the Optimism superchain network will turn into an infrastructure like Cosmos Hub, Avalanche, or Polkadot, which is only for L2 networks.
One of the main features of L2 networks developed based on OP Stack technology will be interoperability or, in other words, compatibility — the ability to conduct transactions between blockchains of the Optimism ecosystem without additional protocols (for example, cross-chain bridges).
In addition, in May 2024, OP Stack added L3-resolved support. With the advent of the superchain, developers can create solutions on top of the Optimism L2 network and join its ecosystem, just as Optimism itself is part of the Ethereum ecosystem. Developers of L3-solutions will be able to implement their own "gas tokens" to pay for transactions in their networks and share revenues with the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) Optimism, receiving the right to participate in the management of the ecosystem, as well as several privileges, such as:
- Access to the community of developers of the Optimism ecosystem;
- The right to participate in token distributions (airdrops) by OP Labs;
- The right to participate in grant programs and other community initiatives.
In June 2024, the OP Labs team rebranded its Optimism solution to OP Mainnet, although the protocol's native cryptocurrency remained with the previous name, which is displayed in monitoring services such as CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko.
Also, the developers of Optimism introduced the proof of errors in smart contracts (Fault Proof) into their solution, which gave Optimism users the right to independently dispute potentially fraudulent and erroneous transactions.
Airdrop of OP tokens
In February 2024, the Optimism team conducted another OP airdrop (distribution of free tokens) among users of its L2 network. As part of this airdrop, 10.3 million OP tokens were distributed among almost 23 000 unique addresses to encourage NFT creators who contribute to the development of the Optimism ecosystem.
Since 2022, the Optimism team has conducted 4 airdrops, including the one shown above. The remaining three airdrops were carried out:
- may 31, 2022 — 231.9 million OP;
- february 9, 2023 — 11.7 million OP
- september 18, 2023 — 19.4 million OP
OP Labs still has about 560 million OP in reserve for future distributions, which is 44% of the tokens circulating on the market as of October 2024. The dates and conditions of the next distributions are not known in advance.
Conclusion
Considering the development of the GameFi sector and the growing trend towards it, Optimism in the future has every chance to gain a foothold as one of the key decentralized platforms not only in the Ethereum ecosystem but also among all blockchain protocols on the crypto market.
In December 2023, Fortune Insights predicted that the capitalization of gaming projects would grow to $614 billion by 2030, which could positively impact the dynamics of Optimism, one of the leading networks in this segment.