It aims to be the standard infrastructure, governance, and profit redistribution layer of Superchain, an OP Stack-based chain network. Recently, OP tokens have evolved in design from simple governance tokens to being linked to Superchain profits, a change that significantly improves the token value capture structure. However, key risks still lie in token unlock/distribution pressure, governance concentration, sustainability of Superchain profits, and dependence on large chains such as Base.
Investment View
It must compete with Arbitrum, zkSync, Starknet, Polygon CDK, EigenLayer-based infrastructure, and the appchain/RaaS market. However, for this structure to be strong enough, Superchain revenues must continue to grow and purchases must be large enough to offset supply pressure. Currently, the most important indicators to observe are Superchain profit growth rate, OP purchase execution scale, profit contribution of large OP Chains, speed of increase in OP distribution volume, and Citizens’ House participation quality.
Optimism is an optimistic rollup series Layer 2 that started with the goal of expanding Ethereum, and its positioning has now shifted from a single OP Mainnet chain to a “shared standards-based L2 network” centered on OP Stack and Superchain. The official site suggests that OP Stack runs more than 50 chains, and that the Superchain as a whole handles 17M transactions per day and approximately $14B total asset security.
Investment View
If the number of chains increases and the cross-chain UX becomes fragmented, the Superchain network effect may be overestimated. The core risk of the OP Stack is more than throughput. The current maturity of Optimism is evaluated at 77.8%.